The International Medieval Congress will start tomorrow. As the coordinator for the strand Manuscript studies, I am more than glad to record almost 100 sessions that were accepted this year in diverse strands, esp. “Manuscript Studies” and “Sources & Resources” (co-ordinators: Simon Forde and Kathryn Maude) and which are connected to Manuscripts Studies and Diplomatics.
The special thematic strand of this year’s edition “Worlds of Learning ” and its subtopic “Worlds of Learning, 17: Manuscripts & Documentary Culture ” also attracted many paper and session proposals.
In the list below, also some few sessions included in series relevant to this list (e.g. Cistercian session 549 connected to Cistercian session 649 “Cistercians and the Written Word”).
Program
1 – Keynote Lectures 2025: Worlds of Learning – Histories of Reading in Medieval Southwest Asia / North Africa (Language: English) — ‘The Treasure of Wisdom Is Chiefly Contained in Books’: Reading in Late Medieval Europe (Language: English)
Konrad Hirschler, Universität Hamburg, Sabrina Corbellini, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and Sita Steckel, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
Abstract: Histories of Reading in Medieval Southwest Asia / North Africa:
This lecture delves into the study of reading history in late medieval Southwest Asian and North African societies. Given the scarcity of direct evidence of reading in historical sources, scholars have employed various approaches to establish it as a distinct field of study. Key areas of concern have included examining the relationship between individual and communal reading, as well as exploring the involvement of otherwise underrepresented groups, such as commoners, dependents, and women, in the realm of learning. The lecture will specifically centre on communal reading as a cultural practice to demonstrate the current state of research and future prospects in the study of reading history.
Abstract: Reading in Late Medieval Europe:
Shortly before his death, the English bishop and bibliophile Richard of Bury (1281-1345) completed his Philobiblon, a collection of short essays reflecting on strategies of acquisition, preservation, and organisation of books and collections but, most of all, a passionate and wholehearted declaration of love for books and reading. In his unreserved plea for opening up access to books by creating spaces and places for reading, Richard states that ‘in books [he] find[s] the dead as if they were alive; in books [he] foresee[s] things to come; in books warlike affairs are set forth; from books come forth the laws of peace’.
Richard of Bury’s words offer an outstanding starting point for a discussion of the cultural and social impact of reading activities and for a reflection on the ethical value of creating, sharing, and interpreting knowledge across late medieval Europe. Essential to this analysis will be the scrutiny of reading performances and trajectories as described in late medieval autobiographical sources, thereby listening to the ‘voices of readers’. This will contribute to the retrieval and evaluation of readers’ motives for engaging in individual and collective reading activities across a broad geographical and social spectrum, far beyond the traditional focus on learned religious and lay elites. The evidence retrieved in the analysis of the selected (ego)documents will be combined with archival materials concerning the creation of ‘dedicated places of reading’: public or semi-public book collections and libraries facilitating the establishment of links and flows of knowledge and the creation of reading communities.
107 – Books of Hours: Female Devotion and Uses of Manuscripts
IMC Programming Committee and Katrin Janz-Wenig, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky
107-a – ‘All heaven in the palm of your hand’: Books of Hours in the Lobkowicz Collection
Jan Malý, Muzeum Lobkowiczkého Paláce
107-b – Paratexts in the Bohun-Edinburgh Manuscript and the Arundel-Lancaster Nexus
Daniel Bennett Page, Independent Scholar
107-c – From Parchment to Paper: The Virgin Mary and Word Made Flesh
Autumn George, Johns Hopkins University
Jean-Paul Rehr, Università degli Studi di Torino, Marta Gravela, Università degli Studi di Torino and Samuel Cohn, University of Glasgow
Description
Sponsored by the ERC project DemAlps – itself focused on the political ‘self-realization’ of communities in late medieval Alps as expressed in the explosion of documentary culture – this panel seeks to compare three different cases of the conflicts of self-definition and external definition of communities from medieval France, Occitania and Italy. Based on his recent edition of one of the oldest and largest set of inquisition records (1245-46), Rehr reconsiders how the punishing results of the Albigensian Crusade quickly lead to new forms of local civil rule in the county of Toulouse, and how that came into conflict and settlement with the new inquisition. In her paper, Gravela examines ‘Waldensianism’ as a famous dissent in certain Italian Alpine valleys of the fifteenth century, and how such notions obscure the complex entanglements of political and religious life of local communities. The final paper by Forrest presents a case where inclusion and exclusion seem to exist side by side: in the Ile-de-France, late fifteenth century parish visitation records reflect on one hand the clear corporate status of women with official representation in particular contexts, yet at the same time demonstrates their exclusion from parish representation on numerous other matters.
Presentations
118-a – Obstetric Expertise and the Gendering of Political Communities in 15th-Century Northern France
Ian Forrest, University of Glasgow
118-b – ‘Waldensians’, Catholics, and Community Identity: Political and Religious Dissent in the 15th-Century Western Alps
Marta Gravela, Università degli Studi di Torino
118-c – Village Consulates in the County of Toulouse: Products of the Albigensian Crusade, Irritants of Inquisitors, 1229-1245
Jean-Paul Rehr, Università degli Studi di Torino
Harriet Mahood, Independent Scholar and Naomi Speakman, British Museum, London
Presentations
121-a – Atlas and Nemroth: Personifications of Expertise and Knowledge
Rose Walker, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London
121-b – What Is the Position of Rape within the Chivalric Code?: Learning through Trauma Narratives
Lindsay Pereira, Concordia University, Montréal
122 – Tradition and Innovation: Worlds of Learning in Medieval Nordic Law Books
Stefan Drechsler, Universitetet i Bergen and Seán Vrieland, Københavns Universitet
Sponsor
NordicLaw: The Production and Use of Vernacular Law Manuscripts in the North from 1100 to 1600
Description
Based on material evidence and interdisciplinary methodological expertise from the fields of philology, codicology and palaeography, the session “Tradition and Innovation: Worlds of Learning in Medieval Nordic Law Books” explores common codicological, scribal and visual aspects in Norwegian and Swedish law manuscripts and fragments dated to the Nordic Middle Ages (ca. 1100–1600). The aim is to proposes a progress of layout, script and textual production of legal codices from medieval Norway and Sweden, and to establish a critical assessment of legal writing in these two Nordic regions as worlds of learning and innovation. While research has hitherto seen legal manuscripts from these highly political regions primarily as national products only, this session will study them from common Nordic perspectives and with particular focus on the intellectual history. The aim is to proving links between societal circumstances and modes of production, and related flow of ideas between important cultural centres in the border regions of medieval western and eastern Scandinavia.
Presentations
122-a – Size and Design of Medieval Norwegian and Swedish Legal Manuscripts
Már Jónsson, Háskóli Íslands, Reykjavík
122-b – Codicology of Medieval Norwegian and Swedish Legal Manuscripts
Stefan Drechsler, Universitetet i Bergen
122-c – ‘Vm lóg noregs ok swyia’: Palaeographic Developments and Peculiarities in Medieval Norwegian and Swedish Legal Manuscripts
Tonje Helen J. Waldersnes, Universitetet i Bergen
123 – Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning, I: Manuscripts as Instruments of Learning and Teaching
Mildred Budny, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey, Phillip Bernhardt-House, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey and N. Kıvılcım Yavuz, University of Leeds
Sponsor
Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, Princeton
Description
Whether substantial or slender, and even if now reduced to fragments, manuscripts small and large could in their own times, and still might in our own, open up worlds of exploration and learning. These virtues pertain to volumes as varied as massive authority texts, religious or secular (ranging from Bibles in full or Biblical Books to legal, scientific, medical, or alchemical texts); classbooks for diverse purposes and audiences; copies of poetry, recipes, or historical records; and scraps or segments of learning or lore gathered in commonplace books or miscellanies. Not only the original contents but also accretions, reworkings, and patterns of use, abuse, and transmission bring evidence to bear upon their abilities as witnesses across time and place for intentions for and practices of learning.
In many ways grounded upon their contents, including texts, glosses, commentaries, and navigational aids, medieval manuscripts can function as containers, conveyors, or embodiments of worlds to discover and teach. Their worlds speak volumes.
As Part I of three Sessions in our suite on ‘Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning’, accompanied by a Round Table discussion, this opening session embraces papers on a wide variety of subjects, genres of manuscripts, approaches, and perspectives. We seek to explore how manuscripts of many kinds might effect learning, whether directly or indirectly, in the transmission of written materials between their makers, models or exemplars, readers, viewers, and users.
Presentations
123-a – Looking After, Looking Up: Bede’s Martyrology as a Pastoral and Clerical Reference
Antony R. Henk, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
123-b – ‘Idem sua meretrix putabat’: Clerical Misogyny and a Scholiast’s Glossing of Horace
Justin Hastings, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey
123-c – Glosses for the Sentences of Peter Lombard in Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 691: Between Medieval Education, Anonymous Disputation, and Doctrinal Controversy
Fedor Nekhaenko, Cornell University
124 – Forgotten, Unnamed, and Overlooked: What Can We Learn from Texts Rarely Studied by Research?
Helena Geitz, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Ludger Körntgen, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and Rob Meens, Universiteit Utrecht
Description
What constantly accompanies the historian is a sense of curiosity and the continuous discovery of new questions to ask the sources available to us. But there are sources that have not yet been asked much at all, texts that are often misinterpreted in research or, due to inadequate manuscript catalogues, simply overlooked or misjudged:
Thus, penitential handbooks, which are often simplified in research as mere “lists of sins and the corresponding penances”, often also offer underestimated texts that were intended to contribute to the instruction and education of priests, sinners and the parish. A special text genre are the redemptions or commutations, which are essentially translations of one type of penance into another to enhance the practicability of a penitential handbook. They are usually not listed in manuscript catalogues, rarely correctly identified as such, and can be easily overlooked due to their various positions before, after, within, or completely independent of the penitential handbooks causing them to be at best mentioned in passing. They often appear in diverse sets of texts that accompany the contents of a codex that are usually considered central, like identifiable canon law collections, penitential books, decretals, and larger writings of the Church Fathers. Smaller texts that stand before, after, or between these “name-giving text elements” are usually not included in manuscript catalogues or databases.
But what can research learn from precisely these mostly unappreciated texts? What questions about sources, dependencies, traditions, and the use of documents can be answered this way?
Presentations
124-a – Penitential Handbooks as a Vehicle for Knowledge Sharing
Patrick Minkus, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
124-b – Education as a Factor in Penitential Practice according to 8th-Century Redemptions
Adrian Dünweg, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
124-c – Addition, Accompanying Text, Random Occurrence?: About Texts that Do Not Even Appear in Manuscript Catalogues
Helena Geitz, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
138 – From Digital to Distant Diplomatics, I: Digital Methods for Historical Research
Tamas Kovacs, Universität Graz, Georg Vogeler, Universität Graz and Daniel Luger, Universität Wien
Sponsor
Institut für Digitale Geisteswissenschaften, Universität Graz
Description
This session showcases cutting-edge digital methods that are transforming our approach to historical research, particularly in the context of medieval charter studies. Our presentations demonstrate how digital tools and methodologies can illuminate the complex “worlds of learning” embedded in these crucial historical documents. We explore innovative techniques for encoding and analyzing medieval charters, revealing intricate networks of knowledge exchange and social relationships. Through the application of Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) and data visualization tools, we uncover new insights into the production, dissemination, and use of charters across different cultural contexts. Our research not only enhances our understanding of medieval administrative practices but also sheds light on broader patterns of literacy, governance, and social interaction. By employing GIS-based mapping and network analysis, we visualize the spatial and social dimensions of charter production, offering new perspectives on the interconnected nature of medieval societies. These digital approaches enable us to transcend traditional geographical and disciplinary boundaries, contributing to a more holistic and globally-oriented understanding of pre-modern learning and knowledge transmission.
Presentations
138-a – Data Modelling for Medieval Charters: Extending CEI2TEI for Enhanced Digital Diplomatic Analysis
Virgile Reignier, École Nationale des Chartes, Paris
138-b – HTR Analysis of Cartulary LL 387: Insights and Visualisation
Michela Galli, Sapienza Università di Roma
138-c – Mapping the Diplomatic Production of Serbia in the 14th Century
Žarko Vujošević, Universität Graz
138-d – Distribution of Documentary Evidence in the Late Medieval Small Town of Krems/Stein, Austria
Johannes Laroche, Universität Graz
Giovanni Varelli, Università degli Studi di Pavia and Cinzia Grifoni, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
Sponsor
ERC Project SCRIBEMUS: ‘Scribes of Musical Cultures Decoding Early Technologies of Music Writing in Latin Europe, c. 900-1100’, Università degli Studi di Pavia
Description
The Session will feature three presentations by researchers from the team of the ERC project SCRIBEMUS Scribes of Musical Cultures. Decoding Early Technologies of Music Writing in Latin Europe (c. 900–1100), lead by Giovanni Varelli at the University of Pavia [scribemus.unipv.it]. The aim of SCRIBEMUS is to pursue a transformative focus on the first large-scale spreading of music writing in Latin Europe by testing the novel hypothesis that singer-scribes worked as part of, and were influenced by, so-far unrecognised networks in creating graphic technologies for the representation of musical sound, an innovation that changed the course of western music history to this day. The papers will present the results of the work undertaken in the initial phase of the project. This phase was aimed at investigating a previously unexplored network of diffusion of musical notation, connecting northern Italy to Catalonia, through a series of studies ranging from musical palaeography to Latin palaeography, textual philology, art history, and linguistics.
Presentations
141-a – South Francia: Its Singers and Music Scripts
Giovanni Varelli, Università degli Studi di Pavia
141-b – Singers as Readers: Music Additions in Non-Liturgical Manuscripts from the 10th-Century Northern Mediterranean
Evina Stein, Università degli Studi di Pavia
141-c – Examples of Textual Exchanges in the Northern Mediterranean: Monza, Biblioteca Capitolare, c-9/69 and Its Echoes in Northeastern Iberia
Patrick S. Marschner, Università degli Studi di Pavia
Nils Foege, Universität zu Köln and Julia Bruch, Universität zu Köln; Universität Mannheim
Description
In this session, doctoral researchers from different disciplines of medieval studies present case studies on the various dimensions of the coexistence and interdependence of manuscript and print that characterize the transformative period of book history in the 15th and 16th century. This is reflected in the production of books and in contemporary collections as well as in the materiality of the books themselves: The different ways in which both media were intertwined range from the combination of manuscript and print in hybrid volumes, handwritten supplements and paratexts in printed works to fragments of older manuscripts used as maculation in incunabula.
The study of these aspects is emphasized by the approach of ‘book archaeology’. In this methodical framework, manuscripts and early printed books are not merely seen as textual witnesses but as unique material objects. As such, their copy-specific features including writing material and binding, script or printing type but also ownership marks and reader annotations provide material and paratextual evidence on the books‘ provenances as well as their histories of production, distribution and use. This approach is especially useful in reconstructing and analyzing medieval and early modern collections and libraries.
201-a – Hybrid Volumes in Cologne Monastic Libraries
Nils Foege, Universität zu Köln
201-b – ‘Vide in albo codice spisso presso’: On the Coexistence and Use of Manuscript and Print in Sigmund Gossembrot’s 15th-Century Library
Elena Brandazza, Universität Bern; Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
201-c – Fragments, Manuscript, and Print in a 16th-Century Danish School Library
Charlotte Epple, Syddansk Universitet, Odense
Davide Morra, Università degli Studi di Torino and Chiara Corradini, Università degli Studi di Torino
Sponsor
ERC Project DemAlps ‘Democracies of the Alps: Issues, Practices, and Ideals of Politics in Mountain Communities, c. 1300-1500’
Description
Historiography portrays the Alps as a frontier but also as a space of lively mobility of people, goods and knowledge, thanks to networks that developed beyond the main routes of cross-border transit. The goal of the panel is to investigate how the circulation of people and documentary practices are in fact entangled. We will reflect on the integration of different areas into broader contexts, measuring the relevance of factors such as the relationship between Alpine valleys and urban centers, the impact of state-building processes and the interaction with the know-how of outside economic actors. Through a focus on people and local cultures, we will try to argue that the adoption of certain practices was neither mechanical nor linear, as it responded to both different learning pathways and usage choices.
Presentations
218-a – Writing for the Community: People, Education, Careers in the Central Alps
Elisabetta Canobbio, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
218-b – Communities in Numbers: Learning How to do ‘Public’ Accounts in the Small Towns of the Western Alps
Davide Morra, Università degli Studi di Torino
218-c – How to Do Things ‘Just’ with Words: Orality, the Written Word, and Business Organisation in the Eastern Alps
Tommaso Vidal, Independent Scholar
223 – Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning, II: Manuscript Pedagogy and Pedagogy of Manuscripts
Mildred Budny, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey, Phillip Bernhardt-House, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey and Mildred Budny, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey
Sponsor
Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, Princeton
Description
As much as with later printed books used in scholastic settings, many manuscripts have been used for teaching purposes, and show evidence of this in various ways. The glossing of texts in multilingual contexts (which all medieval cultures were where vernaculars and Latin are in use, whether or not the vernacular is being employed for literary purposes), the utilization of chapter headings or titles within established texts for easier referencing, marginal manicules highlighting particular passages, and any number of other pieces of on-page aids in finding or understanding the written material present all demonstrate such pedagogical motives where manuscript composition is concerned. Classbooks, commonplace books, and miscellanies can be prepared with navigational aids for their study, while others acquire such aids as they are composed and subsequently used.
Further, manuscripts can be instruments of learning and teaching for modern people in medieval academic settings. The transferable skills of manuscript study include paleography, codicology, forensic examination, textual interpretation, and visual ornamentation, illustration, and organization, amongst other applications. Manuscript facsimiles, diplomatic editions, and online electronic reproductions can all be employed in classroom settings for these purposes. Innovative hybrid analogue and digital approaches to use of these manuscript materials in teaching continue to proliferate.
This session examines the multiplicity of opportunities provided by manuscripts for pedagogy through a variety of lenses, ranging from case-studies to collaborative projects.
Presentations
223-a – Interpretatio Hibernica as Teaching Technique
Phillip Bernhardt-House, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey
223-b – Arboreal Diagrams and Theological Education: The Dissemination of the Iconographic Motif Lignum vitae in Manuscripts of the Specula Theologia
Helena Gracià Castejón, Universitat de Barcelona
223-c – Hermes Trismegistus in the Medieval Classroom
David Porreca, University of Waterloo, Ontario
224 – States of Excerption, I: Medieval Collections and Their Derivatives
Gideon de Jong, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen and Catherine Cubitt, University of East Anglia
Sponsor
ERC Project SOLEMNE ‘The Social Life of Early Medieval Normative Texts’
Description
In the (early) Middle Ages, learning meant collecting: the extant manuscript witnesses are filled with medieval collections made up of texts taken from (excerpts of) earlier works. These building blocks not seldom derive from texts of different genres and the resulting collection also often defies neat classification into genres. The picture becomes even more interesting when collections themselves are excerpted and their parts are used in ‘derivative’ collections.
This session discusses canon law collections like the Quadripartitus, where we witness excerpted building blocks being merged into new ‘collections’ with different canon law materials and texts from different genres. It hones in on forged material brought into existing collections, like Pseudo-Isidore’s decretals. We continue to explore the process of collecting and excerpting in a collection of inscriptions from the Abbey of Lorsch and a Merovingian florilegium which brings in texts from several genres to instruct monks in their preaching.
The session has scholars of medieval cultural, social, and intellectual history challenge definitions of what makes one collection. What gives each collection its particular genre? What do the genre-crossing lives of excerpts tell us? What forms the cohesive force of a collection? Where do excerpts from one collection end, new collections begin?
Presentations
224-a – ‘Quales debeant esse pastores’: Moral Guidance for Preaching Monks
Matthieu van der Meer, Syracuse University, New York
224-b – An Early Medieval Epigraphic Sylloge as an Intentional Collection
Seán Stewart, University of Toronto
224-c – Patchworking the Truth: Some Aspects of Pseudo-Isidorius’ Textual Method of Excerpting Auctoritates
Kristina Mitalaité, Lietuvos Kultūros Tyrimų Institutas, Vilnius
224-d – ‘Hac pauperrima excerptione’, or, an Intellectual Powerhouse Disguised as a ‘Little Work’: The Case of the Collectio canonum quadripartitus
Bruno Schalekamp, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen
238 – From Digital to Distant Diplomatics, II: Computational Linguistics and Text Analysis
Tamas Kovacs, Universität Graz, Georg Vogeler, Universität Graz and Georg Vogeler, Universität Graz
Sponsor
Institut für Digitale Geisteswissenschaften, Universität Graz
Description
This session explores the intersection of computational linguistics and medieval studies, showcasing innovative approaches to understanding diverse “worlds of learning” across cultures and languages. Our presentations demonstrate how digital methodologies can unveil hidden patterns and connections in historical texts, challenging traditional narratives and broadening our understanding of knowledge transmission. From analyzing multilingual prayer books to examining semantic shifts in Anglo-Norman charters, we illustrate how computational techniques can reveal the complexities of cultural exchange and linguistic evolution. By employing stylometric visualization and network analysis, we shed light on the interconnected nature of medieval intellectual communities and the circulation of ideas. These digital approaches not only enhance our ability to process vast corpora of historical texts but also promote a more inclusive and global perspective on medieval learning. By bridging the gap between computational science and historical research, we contribute to a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of pre-modern knowledge systems, their social contexts, and their enduring impact on intellectual traditions.
Presentations
238-a – When Danes Prayed in German
Manex Aguirrezabal Zabaleta, Københavns Universitet
238-b – Stylometric Visualisation of the Medieval Chancery of Liège
Noé Leroy, École Nationale des Chartes, Paris
238-c – Named Entity Recognition and Network Analysis on Clients of Late Medieval Notaries
Franziska Decker, Universität Graz
238-d – The Norman Conquest of 1066 Was a Transformative Event
Michael Gervers, University of Toronto, Scarborough
239 – Listed Knowledge, I: Organisation and Expertise
Barbara Denicolò, Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg, Christina Antenhofer, Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg and Christina Antenhofer, Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg
Sponsor
FWF Projekt 35988 ‘The Making of Inventories as Social Practice’ (INVENTERIA), Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg / Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck
Description
Medieval inventories are not mere lists of objects, but important repositories of knowledge. As products of the social practice of inventorying, they must be re-examined as complex documents that encompass not only the catalogued objects but also the extensive specialist knowledge required for their creation and interpretation. The panel will examine the multi-layered nature of castle and library inventories, considering the knowledge required for their creation, the categorisation systems used and the cultural and material insights embedded within them. The objective of the panel is to elucidate the intellectual framework that informed their creation and to examine how these lists functioned as instruments of power, control and the production of knowledge. Additionally, the panel will investigate how inventories create meaning by telling stories. By analysing the creation, use and transmission of lists, the panel will reveal how medieval administrators managed knowledge in their respective fields. Discussions will address the role of lists in shaping expertise, codifying authority and facilitating communication across geographical and disciplinary boundaries. A particular focus will be on the role of modern scholarly thesauri, which derive vocabularies from these lists and not only collect, structure and standardise the knowledge they contain, but also create new knowledge.
Presentations
239-a – How to Record Chattels: A Processing Guide
Barbara Denicolò, Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg
239-b – Lists Created from Lists: Dimensions of Knowledge and Organisation in a Thesaurus of Tyrolean Castle Inventories
Elisabeth Tangerner, Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg
239-c – The Case of the Missing Missi: Rethinking Early Medieval Inventories and Their Varied Forms and Purposes
Oskar Dahl Lein, Universitetet i Oslo
Bettina Bildhauer, University of St Andrews and Emilie van Opstall, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Sponsor
AHRC-DFG Project ‘The Seven Sages of Rome: Editing and Reappraising a Forgotten Premodern Classic from Global and Gendered Perspective’
Description
The Seven Sages of Rome, also known as the story of Sindbad, Sendebar, Dolopathos or Diocletian, is one of the most translated and transmitted premodern story matters, with over 1000 known manuscripts and print editions in over 30 languages. This makes it even more surprising that it has not reached canonical status in any language, and is virtually unstudied. Since the IMC in 2018, a loose and welcoming transnational group of scholars has been exploring this tradition in monthly online meetings, workshops, special issues and funded projects. This session, one of a pair, explores individual English, Danish and French versions of the story matter with particular attention to matters of gender and narrative form.
Presentations
241-a – Curfew in The Seven Sages of Rome: Between Form and Frame
Jordan K. Skinner, Princeton University
241-b – Translating Bad Trans Objects in the Danish Seven Wise Masters
Basil Arnould Price, University of California, Los Angeles
241-c – From the Evil Queen to the Saracen Princess: The Making of Heterosexuality in the French Prose Continuations of Le Roman des Sept Sages de Rome
Yasmina Foehr-Janssens, Université de Genève
241-d – The Stepmother’s Footprints: Tracing the French A and L Seven Sages Traditions through Metanarrative
Jane Bonsall, University of St Andrews
Mildred Budny, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey, Hannah Goeselt, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey and N. Kıvılcım Yavuz, University of Leeds
Sponsor
Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, Princeton
Description
As Part III in our series on ‘Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning’, this session moves into the realms of navigation. We travel not only across the pages and within the books, but also into the world through books, documents, charts, maps, and the transmission of texts through copying from one to another, correspondence sent between writer and recipient, and the exchange of written materials, as well as the models of script with which they are written.
The selection of papers for this session explore charted and uncharted terrain or seas by case studies focusing upon materials – manuscripts, letter forms, correspondence, and maps – which exhibit voyages variously into territories, modes of communication, exchange, and agency, and thereby present embodiments of windows onto multiple worlds, in natural, practical and conceptual realms.
Presentations
323-a – A Matter of Minims: Transmission of Scribal Knowledge in Three Manuscripts from Slovenia, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, and Poland
Jessica Cochran, University of New Mexico
323-b – Closing the Book: Margherita Datini’s Role in Closing One of Her Husband’s Companies after His Death – As Revealed by Identification of Handwriting among the Archives
Eleanor Congdon, Youngstown State University, Ohio
323-c – Navigating More than One World: Production and Transmission of Late Medieval Majorcan Charts on Vellum as Instruments of Knowledge
Irina Boeru, University of Oxford
324 – States of Excerption, II: Methods for Genre-Crossing Texts
Gideon de Jong, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen and Gideon de Jong, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen
Sponsor
ERC Project SOLEMNE ‘The Social Life of Early Medieval Normative Texts’
Description
This sessions follows up on first States of Excerption panel. We have many manuscript witnesses to medieval collections made up of texts taken from (excerpts of) earlier works. These building blocks not seldom derive from texts of different genres and the resulting collection also often defies neat classification into genres. How are we to make sense of such texts? When we abandon the discrete classification into conventional genres like canon law, sermons, pastoral care or Patristic writing, can we still make sense of the material we find?
Modern doubts about collections and genres have increased the need for new research methods and approaches, often digital. The session explores various ways in which digital research methods help us deal with excerptions and collections on their own terms. It discusses how text reuse detection can help to track authorship of formulaic language in canon law and homilies. It explores the rhetoric around ecclesia and synagoga in patristic authors through natural language processing, and argues vector databases can help track texts as well as ideas of the Church Fathers throughout the European Middle Ages.
Presentations
324-a – Formulae of Authority
Gleb Schmitt, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen
324-b – Mapping Rhetoric: A Digital Reappraisal of Synagoga and Ecclesia in Late Antiquity
Celis Tittse, Universiteit Utrecht
324-c – Vectorising the Fathers: Using Digital Methods to Explore the Reception of Patristic Exegesis
Sven Meeder, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen
338 – From Digital to Distant Diplomatics, III: Manuscript Studies and Digital Preservation
Tamas Kovacs, Universität Graz, Georg Vogeler, Universität Graz and Adam Zapała, Polska Akademia Nauk, Warszawa; Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II
Sponsor
Institut für Digitale Geisteswissenschaften, Universität Graz
Description
This session explores the intersection of traditional manuscript studies and cutting-edge digital preservation techniques, offering new perspectives on the material and cultural dimensions of pre-modern “worlds of learning”. Our presentations demonstrate how digital technologies are revolutionizing our ability to access, analyze, and preserve medieval manuscripts, opening up new avenues for understanding diverse learning traditions. We examine the development and application of Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) models for various scripts, showcasing how these tools can accelerate research and democratize access to historical texts. The session also highlights innovative approaches to manuscript visualization and accessibility, including the creation of 3D models of illuminated manuscripts. These digital methods not only enhance preservation efforts but also provide new ways to engage with and interpret medieval texts and images. By combining traditional codicological and paleographical expertise with advanced computational techniques, we contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the social, material, and intellectual contexts of manuscript production and use. This interdisciplinary approach fosters a more inclusive and globally-oriented perspective on pre-modern learning, bridging cultural and temporal divides.
Presentations
338-a – Learning to Write in Medieval Female Monasteries: An Interdisciplinary Study of SS. Pietro e Sebastiano in Naples, Italy
Antonella Ambrosio, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II and Anguelos Nicolaou, Universität Graz
338-b – Creating a Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) Model for Serbian Medieval Charters and Letters
Vladimir Polomac, University of Kregujevac, Serbia
338-c – Development of the Handwritten Text Recognition Software eScriptorium
Agnes Boutreux, University of Toronto
339 – Listed Knowledge, II: Digital Processing and Visualisation
Karoline Irschara, Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck, Elisabeth Tangerner, Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg and Claudia Posch, Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck
Sponsor
FWF Projekt 35988 ‘The Making of Inventories as Social Practice’ (INVENTERIA), Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg / Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck
Description
This panel brings together innovative approaches to exploring, visualising, and editing medieval data using digital tools and knowledge frameworks. By leveraging technologies such as knowledge graphs, conceptual models, and collaborative digital platforms, these approaches offer fresh perspectives on historical research, enhancing both data visualisation and textual analysis. The presentations will demonstrate how digital environments can reveal new insights into historical processes, from inventory practices to manuscript traditions, while preserving the integrity of original sources. These tools also foster collaborative research, enabling scholars to engage with complex datasets and texts in ways that were previously difficult or impossible. The panel highlights how these methods can be applied across various historical contexts, showing the potential for digital innovation in both academic and public history work.
Presentations
339-a – Castles in the Cloud: Visualising Medieval Inventories with CIDOC CRM and Knowledge Graphs
Gerhard Rampl and Milena Peralta Friedburg, Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck
339-b – Inventoried History: The Digital Image of Hohensalzburg Fortress Mirrored in Historical Inventories
Walter Brandstätter, Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg
339-c – Accurately Visualising Lists: How to Edit Lists of Pilgrims Using the BIMA 2.1 Program of the Corpus Masoreticum Project
Alicia Wolff, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
Bettina Bildhauer, University of St Andrews and Yasmina Foehr-Janssens, Université de Genève
Sponsor
AHRC-DFG Project ‘The Seven Sages of Rome: Editing and Reappraising a Forgotten Premodern Classic from Global and Gendered Perspective’
Description
The Seven Sages of Rome, also known as the story of Sindbad, Sendebar, Dolopathos or Diocletian, is one of the most translated and transmitted premodern story matters, with over 1000 known manuscripts and print editions in over 30 languages. This makes it even more surprising that it has not reached canonical status in any language, and is virtually unstudied. Since the IMC in 2018, a loose and welcoming transnational group of scholars has been exploring this tradition in monthly online meetings, workshops, publications and funded projects. This session, one of a pair, explores the story matter as a translingual whole, paying attention to shared elements across different versions in different languages.
Presentations
341-a – ‘Ryghe fayre and ryght joyous narracions’: Visual Design in the Early Modern Tradition of The Seven Sages of Rome
Rita Schlusemann, Freie Universität Berlin
341-b – Travelling Tales between the East and West
Emilie van Opstall, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
341-c – The Seven Sages of Rome as Global Story Matter
Jutta Eming, Freie Universität Berlin
341-d – Where Is Trans*?: Locating and Translating Gender Change in the Sindbad/Sendebar/Seven Sages of Rome Tradition
Bettina Bildhauer, University of St Andrews
342 – Archives and Sources, III: Clerks and Clerical Administrations
Euan Roger, The National Archives, Kew, Jenny McHugh, Lancaster University, Euan Roger, The National Archives, Kew and Paul R. Dryburgh, The National Archives, Kew
Sponsor
The National Archives, Kew
Description
When discussing the networks of power, law, and governance, we often speak of the ‘great men’ of history: kings, earls, enigmatic archbishops. Rarely do we dwell on those who turned the wheels of the administrative machinery: the clerks, those responsible for the production and circulation of most of the material housed by The National Archives. What did the lives and circles of these men look like? To what extent can we view them as a ‘community of learning’ in their own right, interpreting the language and meaning of governance? How did they influence and shape the documents they created? This panel brings together three papers considering individual clerks in their administrative, clerical, and literary contexts. Finally, the respondent will bring together comments from across all three sessions within this strand of papers.
Presentations
342-a – New Sidelights on Adam Pinkhurst?
Andrew Prescott, University of Glasgow
342-b – Because They Had Nothing Better to Do?: The Renewal of the Exchequer Records, 1484-1486
Hannes Kleineke, History of Parliament Trust
348 – Economies of Urban Spaces, III: Digital Methods
Aline Vonwiller, Universität Basel and Tobias Hodel, Universität Bern
Description
This session (III) is part of a session series (I – III). It will discuss digital approaches and methods used in ongoing historical projects and how they can influence our analysis on but also our thinking about history. GIS systems support visualizations of situations in cities, but they map on recent representations and don’t show the perspectives of medieval people about the city. Text recognition and information extraction allow the processing of vast masses of documents but require data modeling to build mental and data-based forms of representations of the past. These approaches empower and shape our capabilities to analyze the Medieval past, but still require knowledge and experience about the shortcomings and capabilities of the technological approaches. Based on three case studies, we want to discuss how and with what approaches what insights can be gained.
For further information, please refer to the other abstracts in our series or visit our webpage:
https://dg.philhist.unibas.ch/de/bereiche/mittelalter/forschung/oekonomien-des-raums/
Presentations
348-a – Who Lives Where in Vienna?: Mapping the Medieval City through the Digitisation of Property Registers
Julian Helmchen, Freie Universität Berlin
348-b – Tracing the Old City of Basel: Data Modelling and the Automated Extraction of Events, Actors, and Objects in the Historical Land Records
Ismail Prada, Universität Bern
Mildred Budny, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey, Phillip Bernhardt-House, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey, Phillip Bernhardt-House, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey, Mildred Budny, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey, Michael Allman Conrad, Universität Konstanz, Hannah Goeselt, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey, Justin Hastings, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey, Antony R. Henk, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, David Porreca, University of Waterloo, Ontario and N. Kıvılcım Yavuz, University of Leeds
Sponsor
Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, Princeton
Description
As Part IV of ‘Manuscripts as Worlds of Learning’, following Parts I-III with sessions of papers on ‘Manuscripts as Instruments of Learning’, ‘Manuscript Pedagogy and Pedagogy of Manuscripts’ and ‘Words, Scripts, and Maps as Windows on Worlds of Learning’, this round table discussion seeks to synthesise insights from their thematic directions as it presents perspectives from individual and collaborative experiences, initiatives, projects, and case-studies using manuscripts and/or surrogates as sources for study, teaching, and learning, whether in or beyond the classroom. We welcome discourse from various perspectives and subjects about the challenges and advantages of teaching or learning from manuscripts, whether viewed directly in person, represented at a distance in photographic, pre-photographic, and other forms, or accessed in a combination of these traditional and updated formats. For example, what measures might come into place where access, physically or digitally, is interrupted, so that improvisatory or innovative approaches are indicated? Under various conditions, favourable or unfavourable, impeded and resourceful, what works, and what works best? We seek advice. Our sessions of papers and round table discussion are intended to focus on pedagogical initiatives, examples, and future prospects for the uses, issues, discoveries, and delights of manuscript studies in the classroom and beyond. The round table discussion rounds out the explorations with reflections and insights.
Round Table Participants
Mildred Budny, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey
Michael Allman Conrad, Fachbereich Literatur-, Kunst- und Medienwissenschaften, Universität Konstanz
Hannah Goeselt, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey
Justin Hastings, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, New Jersey
Antony R. Henk, Englisches Seminar, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
David Porreca, Department of Classics, University of Waterloo, Ontario
- Kıvılcım Yavuz, Institute for Medieval Studies / School of History, University of Leeds
Cristina Andenna, Universität des Saarlandes, Miriam Weiss, Universität des Saarlandes, Cristina Andenna, Universität des Saarlandes, Martin Clauss, Technische Universität Chemnitz, Enrica Salvatori, Università di Pisa, Sita Steckel, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main and Miriam Weiss, Universität des Saarlandes
Description
With digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI), new players appear at universities, not only in the area of research but also in the field of teaching. The focus on the field of teaching leads to new questions like: are there changing expectations of students regarding university teaching? Do we need to redefine the role that university teachers will assume in the future? What changes in university teaching are necessary due to the emergence of chatbots? Is university teaching sufficient in the education of students in relation to their future tasks in jobs in non-university fields? The discussants talk about these questions, change experiences, and point out the possibilities, limits, and requirements of teaching in Medieval Studies at universities today.
Round Table Participants
Martin Clauss, Professur für Geschichte Europas im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, Technische Universität Chemnitz
Enrica Salvatori, Dipartimento di Civiltà e Forme del Sapere, Università di Pisa
Sita Steckel, Historisches Seminar, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
Miriam Weiss, Historisches Institut, Universität des Saarlandes
511 – Women with Books: Reading, Writing, Owning, I
Beata Możejko, Uniwersytet Gdański, Małgorzata Dowlaszewicz, Uniwersytet Wrocławski and Emilia Jamroziak, University of Leeds
Description
This double section considers women’s literacy, education, and book culture in the Middle Ages in Central and Western Europe. The papers explore different aspects of women’s engagement with texts, from reading habits and devotional practices to the keeping of accounting books and the significance of books in wills. They collectively demonstrate that women, whether nuns, townswomen, or members of religious and patrician communities, actively participated in literary culture, used books as tools for religious contemplation and education, and were involved in economic activities through record-keeping. This section highlight women’s intellectual agency and their roles in the transmission of knowledge.
Presentations
511-a – Medieval Dutch Women on Reading
Małgorzata Dowlaszewicz, Uniwersytet Wrocławski
511-b – Books on Death of the Lush Youth: Education, Reading, and Images in the Women’s Religious Communities in Late Medieval Bohemia
Daniela Rywiková, Ostravská Univerzita
511-c – Female Eyes of Faith: Books and Sacred Art in Medieval Nunneries from the Territory of Silesia
Agnieszka Patała, Uniwersytet Wrocławski
511-d – Late Medieval Moravian Townswomen and the Keeping of Accounting Books
Michaela Antonín Malaníková, Univerzita Palackého, Olomouc
524 – Learning through Manuscripts: The Many Layers of Manuals
IMC Programming Committee and Evina Stein, Università degli Studi di Pavia
Presentations
524-a – The Manuscript’s Agency: An Examination of the Changing Meanings and Functions of a Pastoral Manual at St Gall
Mattheis Lorimor, Saint Louis University, Missouri
524-b – Le Manuscrit Enluminé Universitaire: Un Manuel Polyphonique ou Polysémique?
Frédérique Cahu, Sorbonne Université, Paris
534 – Modern Uses of Medieval Sources
IMC Programming Committee and Paul R. Dryburgh, The National Archives, Kew
Presentations
534-a – ‘Ex membranis in lucem editus’: The Reception of Medieval Manuscripts in Early Modern Printed Books
Jennifer Awes Freeman, University of Minnesota
534-b – Edith of Wessex and A History of Women: Using Medieval Learned Women to Defend the Education of Women in the 19th Century
Marine Ollivary, Université de Caen Normandie
543 – Lincoln Documentary Culture(s) and Records, I: Church and Crown
Jessica Holt, University of Lincoln, Dean A. Irwin, University of Lincoln and Louise J. Wilkinson, University of Lincoln
Sponsor
Lincoln Medieval Studies Research Group / Lincoln Record Society
Description
The archives of medieval Lincoln are both rich and extensive, reflecting a diverse range of documentary traditions and contexts. We invite papers which consider any aspect of source production, use, and preservation of documents in the city, town, and diocese of Lincoln during the High and Later Middle Ages. In focusing on a single, richly documented, centre of production, these panels will consider the emergence and evolution of documentary culture over the centuries. Equally they explore the extent to which practices were shared, or differed, across Lincoln at different times and in different spaces.
Presentations
543-a – ‘Superadditi sunt hii libri in armario ecclesie’: Book Owners and Donors in 12th-Century Lincoln
Emma Nelson, University of Manchester; Chetham’s Library, Manchester
543-b – Royal Favour and Local Dispute: Disputing Inheritance in Petitions from 14th-Century Lincolnshire
Joshua Coulthard, Edge Hill University
543-c – Episcopal Authority as Depicted in the Visitation Records of Thomas Bek, Bishop of Lincoln, 1342-1347
Jessica Holt, University of Lincoln
544 – Digital Data Flows: Processing Medieval Documents from England, Berne, and the Hanse
Angela Huang, Forschungsstelle für die Geschichte der Hanse und des Ostseeraums (FGHO), Lübeck, Tobias Hodel, Universität Bern and Silke Schwandt, Universität Bielefeld
Sponsor
SNSF/DFG Project ‘The Flow: From Deep-Learning to Digital Analysis and Their Role in the Humanities Creating, Evaluating, and Critiquing Workflows for Historical Corpora’
Description
How can historical research be combined with digital methods? Recent developments in Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) have opened new avenues for studying historical corpora. In this panel, we will critically appraise standardized digital workflows, allowing historical inquiries with medieval sources. Besides text recognition, the panel will showcase approaches to Named Entity Recognition and event extraction. Both approaches and processing for databases remain underutilized in historical scholarship.
In the panel, we will focus on different types of sources and languages by demonstrating an analysis of “essoins” in medieval English Common Law, Bernese Tower Books (interrogation protocols), and Hanse Recesses, minutes of meetings of the German Hanse. Based on information extraction, it is possible to tackle different kinds of historical topics, like social structures in medieval England, narrative structures to detain prisoners in Berne, and changing discourses around trade privileges among Hanse towns.
Together, these case studies exemplify the growing role of digital analysis in the humanities while keeping a critical stance towards dataified and machine learning-based research to deepen our understanding of historical legal systems and societal structures.
Presentations
544-a – Essoins as an Indicator of Commonality
Christopher Kuhlmann, Universität Bielefeld
544-b – The Hanse and Its Privileges: Economic Advantage or an Instrument of Legitimation?
Inga Lange, Forschungsstelle für die Geschichte der Hanse und des Ostseeraums (FGHO), Lübeck
544-c – Texts on Trial: Examining the Bernese Tower Books through Computational Methods
Dominic Weber, Universität Bern
544-d – The Annals of Fulda: Events over Years as a New History of the Text?
Jesse W. Torgerson, Wesleyan University, Connecticut
549 – Cistercians, I: Cistercians on – and in – the Ground
Terryl N. Kinder, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, Pontigny and Terryl N. Kinder, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, Pontigny
Sponsor
Cîteaux: Commentarii cistercienses
Description
A careful analysis of the ground – and beneath it – will be demonstrated in these presentations, whether through the underbrush, the landscape, or burials.
Presentations
549-a – A Topographic Analysis of the Landscape of the Cistercian Abbey of Topuszko in Croatia
Laszlo Ferenczi, Univerzita Karlova, Praha
549-b – Burial and Oblivion: The Negotiation of Cistercian Commemorative Cultures, 1098-1300
Jonathan Sapp, Andrew College, Georgia
611 – Women with Books: Reading, Writing, Owning, II
Beata Możejko, Uniwersytet Gdański, Małgorzata Dowlaszewicz, Uniwersytet Wrocławski, and Anna Adamska, Universiteit Utrecht
Description
This double section considers women’s literacy, education, and book culture in the Middle Ages in Central and Western Europe. The papers explore different aspects of women’s engagement with texts, from reading habits and devotional practices to the keeping of accounting books and the significance of books in wills. They collectively demonstrate that women, whether nuns, townswomen, or members of religious and patrician communities, actively participated in literary culture, used books as tools for religious contemplation and education, and were involved in economic activities through record-keeping. This section highlight women’s intellectual agency and their roles in the transmission of knowledge.
Presentations
611-a – Patrician Woman of Gdansk with a Book: Image of Dorothea Feber from the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Ewa Bojaruniec-Król, Gdański Uniwersytet Medyczny; Muzeum Gdańska and Beata Możejko, Uniwersytet Gdański
611-b – Viennese City Books: A Reflection of Female Participation in the Private Credit Market
Anna Molnár, King’s College London
611-c – Books in the Late Medieval Wills of Women from Yorkshire
Karolina Prykowska, Uniwersytet Gdański
Saskia C. Quené, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen and Heike Schlie, Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg
Description
The session “Implied Action? Pretentious Learning Between Theory and Practice in Manuscripts” explores the extent to which medieval manuscripts conveying theoretical knowledge imply, invite, or signal practical action from their readers. By focusing on the language and structure of manuscripts, this session investigates whether their imperatives remain merely rhetorical devices or go beyond theoretical instruction. Were these manuscripts intended to inspire action, or did they serve for intellectual display? The focus is on understanding the grey area between theoretical instruction and implied practice, exploring how manuscripts might have encouraged readers to move from passive reception to active application.
The three contributions highlight different ways in which manuscripts mediated between theory and practice. Colored highlights in early medieval manuscripts emphasize text while balancing reader interpretation and structured knowledge. The second paper explores diagrams of tidal patterns, revealing how theoretical models may have informed the creation of tools like tidal lunaries. The final contribution investigates music theoretical diagrams and early musical notation, focusing on how theoretical knowledge of music was visually represented for practical use and performance. Together, these papers reveal the subtle ways manuscripts bridged theoretical learning and potential practical application.
Presentations
616-a – Highlights: Overlaid, Underlined, and Undermined Emphasis in Early Medieval Manuscripts
Thomas Rainer, Universität Basel
616-b – On the Foreshore of Lunar Learning: Between Tidal Theory and Prognostic Practice
Bram van den Berg, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (KNAW), Amsterdam
616-c – Pretentious Knowledge Displayed: Musical Diagrams and Early Musical Notation
Saskia C. Quené, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
623 – Learning and Doing Scribal and Epigraphic Work in the Islamicate World: A Comparative Approach
Arezou Azad, University of Oxford; Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris and Arezou Azad, University of Oxford; Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris
Sponsor
Invisible East / Middle East Medievalists
Description
This panel will explore the different scribal and epigraphic techniques applied and works produced in the Islamicate world between the 8th and 13th centuries CE, and discuss modes of transmission and of learning that have enabled the endurance of styles and protocols in documentary and epigraphic sources. The panel will gauge the extent to which standardization of techniques adds to, or detracts from, the content of the written word, as well as, the importance of training and learning in the Islamicate production of texts on paper and hard surfaces. Examples in this panel will include texts in Arabic, Persian and Judeo-Persian, and texts across varying genres, including state documents, epitaphs, and private letters. An appreciation of digital methods for studying scribal and epigraphic techniques will also be provided.
Presentations
623-a – Inscribing Epitaphs in 8th- to 9th-Century Egypt: Templates and Typologies
Teresa Bernheimer, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
623-b – Learning to Write State Documents in the Islamicate East
Nadia Vidro, University of Oxford
623-c – Acquiring Literacy in Fatimid Ifriqiya
Yusuf Umrethwala, Aljamea-Tus-Saifiyah, Mumbai; Princeton University
649 – Cistercians, II: Cistercians and the Written Word
Terryl N. Kinder, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, Pontigny and Terryl N. Kinder, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, Pontigny
As these presentations will demonstrate from various types of manuscripts, the written word was not always followed, nor did it necessarily record what actually happened.
Presentations
649-a – The Early Transmission of the Legenda Aurea in the Cistercian Order
Constanze Albers, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
649-b – 13th-Century Cistercian Views of World History: Universal Chronicles of the White Monks
Antoni Grabowski, Polska Akademia Nauk, Warszawa
649-c – Learning How to Lead: A Cistercian Handbook for Abbots
Amelia Kennedy, Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey
Special Collections Lunchtime Drop-Ins
702 – A Wyclif Manuscript Discovered at Merton
Michael van Dussen, McGill University, Mark Thakkar, Independent Scholar and Michael van Dussen, McGill University
Sponsor
Lollard Society
Description
John Wyclif was a graduate student at Merton in the mid-1350s, but no writings of his have ever been found in the college library. Jordan Lavender’s discovery of material by and related to Wyclif in a Merton manuscript is therefore a cause for celebration in its own right. It also opens up questions about Wyclif’s philosophical development at Oxford and about the identifiability of his writings. Jordan Lavender himself will speak about the newly-discovered material and its relationship to Wyclif’s other extant works. Luigi Campi will analyse the doctrinal parallels between one of the quaestiones in MS 284 and Wyclif’s so-called “Lost Summa”. Finally, Mark Thakkar will revisit the 19th-century claim that Wyclif’s prose can be identified on the basis of its idiosyncracies alone.
Presentations
702-a – Wyclif Material in Oxford, Merton College, MS 284
Jordan Lavender, Texas A&M University
702-b – Wyclif’s Fingerprints
Mark Thakkar, Independent Scholar
723 – In Memoriam Johanna Green, I: Old English Medieval Manuscripts
Colleen Curran, University of Galway, Christine Voth, Quinnipiac University, Connecticut and Christine Voth, Quinnipiac University, Connecticut
Description
The IMC theme “Worlds of Learning” is an excellent opportunity to remember our friend and colleague, Dr Johanna Green. At the time of her unfortunate passing, Johanna was a leading expert and pioneering scholar in Old English medieval manuscripts and Digital Humanities. In these sessions, we celebrate Johanna’s legacy as an educator, researcher, and innovator.
Johanna was an expert in Old English manuscripts, particularly the Exeter Book, on which she wrote her PhD dissertation (University of Glasgow, 2012). The papers in this session participate with those themes that Johanna researched within her own work: materiality, communities, and Digital Humanities.
Presentations
723-a – Strange New Worlds: The Grave and New Materiality
Keri Thomas, Independent Scholar
723-b – Evidence of Medieval Learning Communities in Manuscripts of the Consolatio Philosophiae
Victoria Lansing, University of Oxford
723-c – Joining Hands: Machine Learning in the Analysis of Ambiguous 11th-Century Scribal Hands
James Shanahan, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza, Poznań
738 – Digital Transformations and Teaching in Medieval Studies
Cristina Andenna, Universität des Saarlandes, Martin Clauss, Technische Universität Chemnitz and Miriam Weiss, Universität des Saarlandes
Sponsor
Professur für Geschichte des Mittelalters, Universität des Saarlandes / Professur für Geschichte Europas im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, Technische Universität Chemnitz
Description
With digitalization and the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) in all sectors of society, different factors have emerged in the areas of both research and teaching which are expected to have a lasting and ever greater influence on the humanities in both internal and non-university contexts. The session aims to address the challenges facing university teaching in the field of medieval studies. These include aspects as the use and development of digital tools in and for university teaching, training students in the application of digital tools and independent creation of digital tools by students. The speakers will present examples of teaching in this field and will report their experiences.
Presentations
738-a – Unlocking Medieval Sources: The Regesta Imperii as Linked Open Data
Andreas Kuczera, Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen, Gießen
738-b – Help or Hindrance?: AI in Teaching Using the Example of Early Medieval Hagiography
Matthias Weber, Ruhr-Universität Bochum; Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz
738-c – Digitised Manuscripts and Teaching Medieval Studies: Different Approaches to Classroom Projects
Manuel Kamenzin, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
749 – Cistercians, III: Shaping Cistercian Life and Its Transmission beyond the Abbey Walls
Terryl N. Kinder, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, Pontigny and Amelia Kennedy, Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey
Sponsor
Cîteaux: Commentarii cistercienses
Description
Many aspects contributed to the formation of a Cistercian, none more influential than the Virgin Mary, whose imprint on monastic life is ubiquitous whether in music, art, or legislation. Despite the impression that the Cistercian ethic was contained within the abbey walls, it not infrequently extended well beyond – into parish churches as well as the secular ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Presentations
749-a – The Virgin Mary in the Cistercian Tradition: Antiphons, Hymns, Artistic Manifestations, and Legislation
Leonardo Colicigno, Università degli Studi di Firenze
749-b – The Cistercians, Parish Churches, and Landscape in Late Medieval Ireland
Louise Moffett, Queen’s University Belfast; Northern Archaeological Consultancy Ltd.
749-c – ‘O benefit of ill!’ Cistercian Monks as Ecclesiastical Office Holders in Late Medieval Britain and Ireland
David E. Thornton, Bilkent Üniversitesi, Türkiye
823 – In Memoriam Johanna Green, II: Marginalised Voices in Medieval Manuscripts
Christine Voth, Quinnipiac University, Connecticut, Colleen Curran, University of Galway and Colleen Curran, University of Galway
Description
The IMC theme “Worlds of Learning” is an excellent opportunity to remember our friend and colleague, Dr Johanna Green. At the time of her unfortunate passing, Johanna was a leading expert and pioneering scholar in Old English medieval manuscripts and Digital Humanities. In these sessions, we celebrate Johanna’s legacy as an educator, researcher, and innovator.
Johanna was committed to ensuring that marginalised voices were recognised and had platforms to talk about their research. The papers in this session continue that legacy by engaging with marginalised voices from the medieval past.
Presentations
823-a – The Golden Age of Kyivan Rus’: Mapping Heritage in Times of War
Susana Torres Prieto, Harvard University
823-b – Mapping Manuscripts: How Surviving Romance Manuscripts are Aiding the Search for People of Colour in North Atlantic Medieval Europe
Georgie Anderson, University of Kent
823-c – Did Women Compile the Old English Medical Manuscript that Survives as London, British Library, Harley 585?
Christine Voth, Quinnipiac University, Connecticut
824 – Nuns at Work: Rethinking the Carolingian Writing Centre of Chelles, c. 700-800
Ana de Oliveira Dias, University of Oxford, Julia M. H. Smith, University of Oxford and Rosamond McKitterick, University of Cambridge
Sponsor
AHRC-DFG Project ‘Crafting Documents, c. 500-800’
Description
The female monastic community of Chelles has long been identified as a centre of excellence for learning and book production in the early Middle Ages. The nature and the quality of its specimens is indicative of a centre endowed with remarkable textual and material resources as well as with coherently trained personnel. Its ‘scriptorium’ was also credited with the development of a particular Pre-Caroline script form that was employed not only in the copying of manuscripts but also in dozens of small identificatory tags that were used in the management of relic collections under the nuns’ care. Yet, despite its intellectual prominence and creative graphic approaches, little is known about the craft of writing therein.
In this session, we will present the findings of a new historical and scientific study of Chelles’ relic documentation and manuscripts c. 700-800 undertaken within the context of the Crafting Documents project. We will discuss the makeup of the inks used and how the task of writing was conceptualised and executed. This research generates a new understanding of writing as a visual and material source and will shed new light on the technical knowledge and craft skills in Chelles and Francia more broadly.
Presentations
824-a – Writing and Devotion in Early Medieval Chelles
Ana de Oliveira Dias, University of Oxford
824-b – Inks in Early Medieval Manuscripts from Chelles: a Scientific Study
Ira Rabin, Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung, Berlin
824-c – Different Hands at Work: The Early Medieval Relic Labels of Chelles
Kirsten Wallenwein, Deutsches Historisches Institut, Paris
836 – Bad Students, Useless Devices: Learning that Went Astray, c. 1050-1250
Michael Staunton, University College Dublin and Laura Cleaver, School of Advanced Study, University of London
Description
The long twelfth century is noted for its famous scholars and schools, and for its intellectual and artistic innovations, but this session draws attention to the less distinguished aspects of learning at this time. Focusing mainly on England, it addresses examples of bad learning, and what these tell us about contemporary scholarship and intellectual life.
Andrea Worm discusses diagrams that are erroneous or even nonsensical. Such works, though often aesthetically pleasing, fail as attempts to visualise knowledge. This paper examines how such mistakes happened, and also the extent to which they were recognised and addressed by contemporaries.
Michael Staunton looks as examples of bad students in contemporary biographies: those who were unwilling or unable to take instruction, and those who thought that they were more erudite than they were. It raises questions about both experiences and attitudes to learning in the twelfth century.
Christoph Mauntel examines bad maps: attempts at geographical representations that diverge from traditional forms of visualisation, with unfortunate results. This paper asks whether such erroneous maps were an attempt to experiment with new ways of representation, or whether they were due to unfamiliarity with or misunderstandings of existing traditions.
Presentations
836-a – Bad Diagrams: Omissions and Mistakes in Visualising Knowledge
Andrea Worm, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
836-b – Bad Education: Struggling to Learn in 12th-Century England
Michael Staunton, University College Dublin
836-c – Bad Maps: Odd Geographical Representations and Ways of Interpreting Them
Christoph Mauntel, Universität Osnabrück
838 – Medieval History, Numerical Methods, and the Global Scale
Sébastien de Valeriola, Université libre de Bruxelles and Aurélie Stuckens, Maison du Patrimoine Médiéval Mosan, Bouvignes-sur-Meuse
Description
Numerical and quantitative methods enable us to approach research questions in medieval history from a different angle. In particular, they enable us to go beyond the local and sampling framework, and consider issues on a global scale. This session will feature talks presenting global analyses of large corpora of several different types (numismatic finds, manuscript contents and texts).
Presentations
838-a – Approaching a Latin Hagiographical Corpus through Computational Lenses: How Can Linguistic Features Help Us Date a Text?
Guillaume Quintin, Université libre de Bruxelles
838-b – Numismatics and Digital Humanities: Quantitative Approaches to the Circulation of Medieval Coins from the Former Low Countries
Nicolas Ruffini-Ronzani, Archives de l’Etat de Namur; Université de Namur
838-c – Mining Legendaries: A Quantitative Heuristic Method for Hagiographic Manuscripts
Sébastien de Valeriola, Université libre de Bruxelles
Description
Directed by Amélie Deblauwe, Maciej Pawlikowski, and Eyal Poleg
The surface of medieval manuscripts is never flat. Much like a topographical map, it is full of crevices and ridges, nearly invisible marks made by not only by scribes and parchmenters, but also by readers as they touched, kissed, or knifed image and text. This session will take place in the Sheppard Room of the Treasures Gallery, using books from Leeds University Special Collections for hands-on demonstration of complex imaging and the use of different light sources in exploring the surface of manuscripts.
Come and learn how new technologies can transform the way we study medieval books and objects. In this session, our team of scientists, imaging specialists, and historians will explore medieval manuscripts from Leeds University Library, using a range of microscopes, light sources, cameras, and scanners. You’ll also learn more about the work and discoveries of the major AHRC-funded Hidden in Plain Sight research project, which furthers the use of advanced scientific technologies within historical studies. We have been employing new technologies to assist in studying the alteration and transformation of books and textual objects, evident, for example, in mutilation, folding, or overpainting. The project team will join the IMC to present the project’s scope and initial findings and to introduce key scientific methods, their potential, and limitations. You are also welcome to our reception on Tuesday, where the team will be happy to answer questions or ideas related to your own research over drinks and nibbles.
Workshop leaders include Amélie Deblauwe, Imaging Specialist (Cambridge University Library), Maciej Pawlikowski, Imaging Specialist (Cambridge University Library), and Eyal Poleg, Historian (Queen Mary University of London).
924 – Science Meets Medieval Manuscripts: Present and Future Perspectives – A Round Table Discussion
Ana de Oliveira Dias, University of Oxford, Julia M. H. Smith, University of Oxford, Andrew Beeby, Durham University, Richard Gameson, Durham University, Ira Rabin, Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung, Berlin, Kathryn Rudy, University of St Andrews and Joanna Story, University of Leicester
Sponsor
AHRC-DFG Project ‘Crafting Documents, c. 500-800’ / ERC Project ‘Insular Manuscripts in the Age of Charlemagne (INSULAR)’
Description
From the chemistry of inks and pigments to the biomolecular analysis of parchment (biocodicology – genomics and proteomics), the past decade has seen an unprecedented advancement in the knowledge of the materiality of medieval manuscripts and documents. Collaborations between medievalists and material scientists have expanded the range of questions we can ask of written sources and have helped challenge long-standing assumptions about the economic, material, and cultural history of the written word in the Middle Ages. What new methodologies and techniques may help take research further? How can we overcome our current limitations? And what is the possible impact of this collaborative work beyond academia? Building upon the work conducted by the Crafting Documents and INSULAR projects, this round table discussion brings together medievalists, scientists, and conservators to reflect on the current state of the field of the scientific study of manuscripts and to discuss new directions and sources of funding for future research.
Round Table Participants
Andrew Beeby, Department of Chemistry, Durham University
Richard Gameson, Department of History, Durham University
Ira Rabin, Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung, Berlin
Kathryn Rudy, School of Art History, University of St Andrews
Joanna Story, School of History, Politics & International Relations, University of Leicester
1015 – Moving Byzantium, I: Manuscripts and Arts at the Margins of the Byzantine World
Claudia Rapp, Universität Wien; Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien and Claudia Rapp, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien; Universität Wien
Sponsor
FWF Projekt ‘Moving Byzantium: Mobility, Microstructures & Personal Agency in Byzantium’, Universität Wien
Description
The research programme Moving Byzantium highlights the role of Byzantium as a global culture and analyses the internal flexibility of Byzantine society. It aims to contribute to a re-evaluation of a society and culture that has traditionally been depicted as stiff, rigid, and encumbered by its own tradition. This is achieved by the exploration of issues of mobility, micro-structures, and personal agency. The papers in this session highlight various elements of cultural exchange, such a manuscripts, architectural features or images, at three border regions of the Byzantine Empire, from the Syriac Middle East and South Caucasia to Italy. Thereby, also channels and mechanisms for the mobility of ideas across various “margins” of Byzantium are brought into comparison.
Presentations
1015-a – Syriac Manuscripts as Agents of Mobility: Tracing Cultural Transmission through Colophonology
Ephrem Ishac, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
1015-b – Learning from the Past: Architectural Copies in Medieval Armenia
Cassandre Lejosne, Université de Lausanne
1015-c – Byzantine Icons of the Virgin ‘in Motion’: The Constantinopolitan Marian Images in the Hagiographic Landscape of North Apulia
Antonio Pio Di Cosmo, Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia
Dominique Stutzmann, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris
Sponsor
Société des Historiens Médiévistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur Public (SHMESP)
Description
Following the 55th Shmesp Congress (Saint-Étienne, 23-26 May 2024) dedicated to “Ascetic Models and Experiences in Medieval Societies”, this session seeks to deepen the reflection and identify how common ascetic models circulated, how they were taught and propagated, what type of science or knowledge they claim, apart from the school and university and their discourse, and, in doing so, what role the informal, the model, and the institutional play.
This session focusses on and compares the normative sources such as monastic rules and the hagiography, to analyze how narrative texts are used to teach the norms.
A.-M. Helvétius highlights that the ascetic models proposed in sources from the Merovingian period primarily target an audience drawn from the aristocracy and should therefore be considered within their political dimension and their connection to reformist ideals. Hagiography and other sources produced in the Frankish world during this time reveal a great diversity of ascetic practices experienced by both women and men, in a context where monastic lifestyles had not yet been unified.
- Bret studies the Lives of monks or monk-bishops – a very popular genre in the early Middle Ages. As heirs to classical biography, these Lives give space to descriptions of the saint’s daily life and occupations, that is ultimately how they led an ascetic life. She explores whether these passages from the Lives can be interpreted as repetitions of the monastic rules and prescriptions for ‘ordinary’ monks, and, if so, to question the value of resorting to hagiographic discourse. Hagiography served as a means to expound the main ideas of the Rule in a more appealing way that invites emulation, yet serving almost paradoxically as a model of excess.
- Costa explores the transmission of the ascetic ethos and practices within Machairas and Enkleistra, two prominent Cypriot monastic communities of the 12th and 13th centuries through their respective typika (monastic rule books). They provide detailed regulations for daily life, spiritual discipline, and communal living. This paper will analyse how each typikon articulates the monastic ideals of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and how these ideals are enforced and internalised within the monastic community, in particular concerning regulations and practices (e.g. dietary restrictions, prayer routines, and communal activities), instructional methods to teach and enforce ascetic ideals (e.g. sermons, exhortations, and collective observances) and the impact on community life.
- Reynolds discusses the earliest vernacular Marian compositions featuring the Virgin’s compassion under the Cross such as the Abruzzo “Lamentation,” the Lombard “Passion,” the Cortona “Ave Vergene Gaudente,” the Urbino plaints, the Marchigian “Lamentation of the Marys,” and the “Lady of Heaven” by Iacopone da Todi. The Virgin’s excruciating love for Jesus drives her desire to die and be buried with him. Did Mary loose faith and give in to despair? Or is it a love that is willing to lose all, even a Son who is God, the ultimate ascetic renunciation? This ascetism would build bridges with the mysticism of the Spiritual Franciscans, for whom love implied a self-annihilation that alone opens the soul to God
Presentations
1019-a – The Diversity of Ascetic Models in the Frankish World
Anne-Marie Helvétius, Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis
1019-b – Vita uel regula: The Lives of Monks as Repetitions of the Ascetic Rules in Early Western Monasticism, 4th-6th Centuries
Florence Bret, Université d’Angers
1019-c – Teaching the Ascetic Ethos: A Comparative Study of Two Medieval Cypriot Monastic Typika, 13th Century
Kyriakos Costa, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens
1019-d – Losing God for Love: The Marian Ascetics of Early Italian Compassion Verse
Brian Reynolds, Fu Jen Catholic University; Istituto Universitario Sophia, Firenze
1021 – Medieval Fragments, I: Methodologies
Manuel Muñoz García, Durham University and Manuel Muñoz García, Durham University
Sponsor
Institute of Medieval & Early Modern Studies (IMEMS), Durham University
Description
Medieval fragments, ever present across a great number of materials, are unique and tantalising windows to the past. Surviving as insertions in later textiles, pedagogical collections or as parts of bindings in manuscripts, fragments offer us layers of meaning: what were they, originally? What was their original purpose? And their later purpose? How and why have they survived? How do we study and analyse them?
In these sessions – Sponsored by the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS) at Durham University – we explore Framentology in a wide sense, from methodology applied to manuscripts to case-studies on textile fragments. From Latin to vernacular, early to late medieval, Iceland to the Iberian Peninsula, the papers in these sessions offer exciting glimpses of new discoveries, re-attributions and digital methods, across different materials and across time and space.
Session I will explore the ways in which fragments can be approached as objects of study. The three papers in this session exemplify three methodological approaches, from the latest developments in Digital Fragmentology to the use of music databases to identify fragments of manuscripts with musical notation as well as the use of fragments as aids in literary studies. These three specific, sometimes intersecting, methodologies show the multiple ways in which manuscript fragments can be analysed, and the wealth of knowledge that they contain.
Presentations
1021-a – A Decade of Digital Fragmentoloy
Lisa Fagin Davis, Medieval Academy of America, Massachusetts
1021-b – Fragments of Medieval Manuscripts Used as Endleaves: A Fragmentology Case Study
Akari Takatsuka, Durham University
1021-c – Music (Dis)Covers: Attribution of the Fragments from the Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine
Oleksandr Okhrimenko, Kyiv School of Economics
1023 – In Memoriam Johanna Green, III: Digital Medievalisms
Colleen Curran, University of Galway, Christine Voth, Quinnipiac University, Connecticut and Immo Warntjes, Trinity College Dublin
Description
The IMC theme “Worlds of Learning” is an excellent opportunity to remember our friend and colleague, Dr Johanna Green. At the time of her unfortunate passing, Johanna was a leading expert and pioneering scholar in Old English medieval manuscripts and Digital Humanities. In these sessions, we celebrate Johanna’s legacy as an educator, researcher, and innovator.
Johanna was a pioneering scholar in Digital Humanities, and she was excited by the many new possibilities that DH can bring to the study of medieval manuscripts. The papers in this session will explore different approaches to Digital Humanities, and how these new approaches can reveal even more about medieval manuscripts and who wrote them.
Presentations
1023-a – A Franken-Book-of-Hours: From Physical to Digital and Back Again
Dot Porter, University of Pennsylvania
1023-b – Reals and Reels: Pop Bibliography, Social Media, and Codicology
Allie Alvis, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, Delaware
1023-c – A Search for the Digitised Manuscript: Constellation, Aura, Folk Art, and Object of the Flâneur – A Benjaminian Provocation
Bill Endres, University of Oklahoma
Tobias Daniels, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and Cynthia Beatrice Stöckle, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Description
In the Middle Ages, compilation was a tried and tested means of acquiring and organising knowledge. The session examines how and under what conditions knowledge was collected, stored and utilised, especially in the early and high Middle Ages. The session focuses on less studied legal compilations and supposedly marginal figures; likewise, the possibilities of digital analysis and presentation will be explored.
Presentations
1024-a – Marginal Notes in Manuscripts of Roman Law in the Carolingian Age
Dominik Trump, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, München
1024-b – Another Hand: The Continuation of Capitularia Compilations
Daniela Schulz, Universität zu Köln
1024-c – Marginal Scholars?: The Practical Use of Older and New Law Texts in High Medieval Compilations
Tobias Daniels, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
1027 – The Vercelli Book: Language, Learning, and Spirituality
Jacob Wayne Runner, Kanazawa University and Eleni Ponirakis, University of Nottingham
Sponsor
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Project (23K12119) ‘Language Ideologies & Spiritual Identity: Comparative Perspectives from the Vercelli Book’
Description
This session aims to explore the rich connections between language, learning, history, and spirituality as manifested across the various poems and prose texts preserved in the Old English Vercelli Book (Biblioteca capitolare di Vercelli cxvii). The papers will specifically address multiple works from the anthology in order to investigate religious, educational, and devotional perspectives.
Presentations
1027-a – A Study of the Descriptions of Pagans in the Vercelli Homilies: Attitudes toward Paganism in the Pre-Conquest Period
Shinobu Wada, Surugadai University
1027-b – Learning Devotion through Vercelli Verse: The Challenge and Joy of Soul and Body I, Homiletic Fragment I, and The Dream of the Rood
Jacob Wayne Runner, Kanazawa University
1027-c – Layers of Learning: The Needs, Successes, and Fears of Education in Three Texts of the Vercelli Book
Taylor Gray, Independent Scholar
Elisa Cugliana, Universität zu Köln and Tara L. Andrews, Universität Wien
Description
To date, digital textual scholarship has meant predominantly that: making our texts digital, which for the most means creating a PDF or a TEI-XML based representation of the text. What is missing is a computational approach: a workflow based on programming code that captures and formalises the very process of textual editing and that can be reproduced by any computer, thereby resulting in a digital representation of the text. From our experience creating digital editions of medieval sources over the past four decades emerge several ideas about a more computational approach to editing and computational editions. The digital and computational technology is available but remains mostly unused and unexplored by philologists. Each of the three papers will address different aspects and different perspectives, by presenting respective use cases in which the text and especially the scholarly knowledge about it is inferred and expressed in more computational fashion rather than a digital encoding. The common thread running between the papers is that new textual scholarship involves putting different classes of knowledge together to create meaning and to create more knowledge about the texts themselves, as we no longer treat these classes of knowledge in isolation. It is in the interaction between these classes of knowledge where additional and new knowledge emerges.
Presentations
1038-a – Worlds to Learn: Computational Modelling of Medieval Narrative
Joris J. van Zundert, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (KNAW), Amsterdam
1038-b – Textual and Material Pathways Intertwined
Elisa Cugliana, Universität zu Köln
1038-c – When Manuscript Materiality Meets Generative Syntax: Classes of Knowledge in Editing Medieval Castilian Prose
Aengus Ward, University of Birmingham
1041 – Physical and Computational Analyses of Manuscripts, Palimpsests, and Digital Visualisations
IMC Programming Committee and N. Kıvılcım Yavuz, University of Leeds
Description
This session has been grouped by the IMC Programming Committee from individually submitted paper proposals. Please select a paper to see its abstract.
Presentations
1041-a – Locating Scholastic Auctoritates with Latin Word Embeddings
Jan Maliszewski, Uniwersytet Warszawski
1041-b – ‘We lost all our manuscripts at the Reformation’: Reframing the Narrative of a Dispersed Medieval Monastic Library
Gudrun Warren, Independent Scholar
1041-c – What Lies Beneath: Deconstructing Palimpsested Manuscripts Using Mitochondrial Genome Analysis
James B. Harr, Christian Brothers University, Tennessee
1041-d – Lost Texts, Low Budgets: Building Affordable Multispectral Imaging Systems
Helen Davies, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and Alexander Zawacki, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
1121 – Medieval Fragments, II: Fragments of Theological/Liturgical Manuscripts and Incunabula
Manuel Muñoz García, Durham University and Manuel Muñoz García, Durham University
Sponsor
Institute of Medieval & Early Modern Studies (IMEMS), Durham University
Description
Medieval fragments, ever present across a great number of materials, are unique and tantalising windows to the past. Surviving as insertions in later textiles, pedagogical collections or as parts of bindings in manuscripts, fragments offer us layers of meaning: what were they, originally? What was their original purpose? And their later purpose? How and why have they survived? How do we study and analyse them?
In these sessions – Sponsored by the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS) at Durham University – we explore Framentology in a wide sense, from methodology applied to manuscripts to case-studies on textile fragments. From Latin to vernacular, early to late medieval, Iceland to the Iberian Peninsula, the papers in these sessions offer exciting glimpses of new discoveries, re-attributions and digital methods, across different materials and across time and space.
Session II will showcase scholarship on liturgical or theological manuscript and incunabula fragments and, importantly, on the collections where they are found. The three papers in this session serve as case studies of how and where liturgical and theological fragments can be found: a pedagogical collection in Japan; a private collector in Iceland and the archive of a cathedral in Spain. This wide-ranging session – chronologically, geographically and in fragment type – is an eye-opening overview that offers unique perspectives and exciting discoveries in the field of Fragmentology.
Presentations
1121-a – Snippets for Sale: On Some Cistercian Manuscript Samples in Japanese Heritage of Handwriting Collections
Tadashi Kotake, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
1121-b – Recataloguing and Analysis of the Incunabula Fragments of the Missale Compostellanum (1495?) in the Archive-Library of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela
Alicia López Carral, Universidad Europea de Madrid
1121-c – Collecting Culture: Árni Magnússon’s Latin Liturgical Manuscript Fragments
Rhiannon Warren, University of Cambridge
1141 – Digital Manuscript Studies, I: Transcriptions and Editions
- Kıvılcım Yavuz, University of Leeds and Adam Zapała, Polska Akademia Nauk, Warszawa; Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II
Sponsor
Digital Medievalist
Description
The Digital Manuscript Studies sessions bring together scholars interested in applying computational tools to manuscript studies. The first session focuses on digital scholarly editing and computational philology. Kramarić discusses the creation of a digital edition for the Croatian medieval text Zrcalo čověčaskago spasenje (1445), showcasing its semi-diplomatic transcription and TEI/XML formatting. Utilising digital tools to uncover scribal practices, Jakobs investigates the English gloss of the Eadwine Psalter. Kapitan outlines a workflow for creating digital editions that support both traditional and digital publication formats while also allowing for visualisations of textual relationships between witnesses.’
Presentations
1141-a – The Complex Digital Object of the Croatian Medieval Text Zrcalo člověčaskago spasenje, 1445
Martina Kramarić, Institut za hrvatski jezik, Zagreb
1141-b – A Digital Approach to the Study of Scribal Practices: The English Gloss of the Eadwine Psalter
Jannis Jakobs, University of Cambridge
1141-c – Three-in-One or More: Multi-purpose XML-Encoded Editions and Computational Philology
Katarzyna Anna Kapitan, École Nationale des Chartes, Paris
Special Collections Lunchtime Drop-Ins: Wednesday
1201 – Burchard’s Decretum: Transmission, Reception, and Digital Potentials
Daniel Gneckow, Universität Kassel, Kevin Kulp, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main and Greta Austin, University of Puget Sound, Washington
Description
The decree of Bishop Burchard of Worms is one of the most influential collections of canon law of the 11th and 12th centuries. The work was widely disseminated, as evidenced by around 80 surviving manuscripts. The section takes a multi-perspective look at the transmission and reception of the work as well as the potentials of its digital edition.
Firstly, Kevin Kulp (Frankfurt am Main) examines how Burchard dealt with the issue of simony and questions the extent to which Burchard’s position was in line with the ideas of church reform as they emerge, for example, in the works of Peter Damian. Following on from this, Daniel Gneckow (Kassel) sheds light on the decree’s transmission. By analysing the manuscript tradition based on neuralgic points, this paper demonstrates that Burchard’s work was subject to selective changes in the course of its dissemination in Italy, reflecting contemporary interests in debates on church reform. Thirdly, Michael Schonhardt (Kassel) illustrates the potential of the digital edition of Burchard’s Decretum, which the Academy project ‘Burchards Dekret Digital’ (BDD) is developing since 2020. Introducing a chatbot, he explores how edition data can be accessed by human and technical agents in the light of recent developments in AI.
Presentations
1201-a – The Offence of Simony in Burchard’s Decretum: Outdated after Just 20 Years?
Kevin Kulp, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
1201-b – Reforming Burchard’s Decretum: Manuscript Tradition and Gregorian Innovation
Daniel Gneckow, Universität Kassel
1201-c – ‘Hey ChatBDD!’: Burchard’s Decretum beyond Digital Editing
Michael Schonhardt, Universität Kassel
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien and Claudia Rapp, Universität Wien; Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
Sponsor
FWF Projekt ‘Die Verflechtung Anatoliens durch Dokumente’ (1200-1300 ENCHANT), Abteilung Byzanzforschung, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
Description
The research programme Moving Byzantium highlights the role of Byzantium as a global culture and analyses the internal flexibility of Byzantine society. It aims to contribute to a re-evaluation of a society and culture that has traditionally been depicted as stiff, rigid, and encumbered by its own tradition. This is achieved by the exploration of issues of mobility, micro-structures, and personal agency. This session compares manuals and models for the drafting of official charters in the chanceries of Mongol and Saljuq Anatolia as well as Byzantium and Trebizond. It highlights how customs and traditions of writing were adapted to a constantly changing geopolitical landscape during the 13th and 14th century, especially in diplomatic exchanges across political and linguistic borders.
Presentations
1215-a – The Mongol Yarlighs addressed to the Saljuqs of Anatolia
Rustam Shukurov, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
1215-b – Writing Manuals for Scribes in Saljuq and Mongol Anatolia
András Barati, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
1215-c – Sons, Brothers, Friends, or Enemies?: How to Address Foreign Rulers in Late Byzantine Imperial and Patriarchal Chanceries
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
1220 – Irish Learning in the Carolingian Age, III: Irish Manuscripts in the Lake Constance Region
Nicole Volmering, Trinity College Dublin and Joanna Story, University of Leicester
Sponsor
Research Ireland Pathway Project ‘Early Irish Hands: The Development of Writing in Early Ireland’, Trinity College Dublin
Description
The third session focuses on a region with one of the highest concentrations of ninth-century Irish manuscripts in Europe – the Lake Constance region, with its power-houses St Gall and Reichenau. Many fundamental questions about these codices still remain to be resolved: were these books written in Ireland or on the Continent? If in Ireland, how did they reach this region? Do some of them reflect groups linked by production, script, or content? Were they connected to known Irish scholars or their networks?
Presentations
1220-a – A Private Library of One Irish Scholar?: A Collective Handwriting Comparison of a Group of 9th-Century Insular Manuscripts with Reichenau Provenance
Peter Fraundorfer, Trinity College Dublin
1220-b – Evidence for an Irish Scriptorium?: A Codicological and Palaeographical Assessment of St. Gallen, MS 904
Nicole Volmering, Trinity College Dublin
1220-c – The Origins of the St Gall Gospels, Stiftsbibliothek, Codex 51: A New Investigation
Joseph Flahive, Royal Irish Academy
1221 – Medieval Fragments, III: Textile and Architectural Fragments
Manuel Muñoz García, Durham University and Manuel Muñoz García, Durham University
Sponsor
Institute of Medieval & Early Modern Studies (IMEMS), Durham University
Description
Medieval fragments, ever present across a great number of materials, are unique and tantalising windows to the past. Surviving as insertions in later textiles, pedagogical collections or as parts of bindings in manuscripts, fragments offer us layers of meaning: what were they, originally? What was their original purpose? And their later purpose? How and why have they survived? How do we study and analyse them?
In these sessions – Sponsored by the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS) at Durham University – we explore Framentology in a wide sense, from methodology applied to manuscripts to case-studies on textile fragments. From Latin to vernacular, early to late medieval, Iceland to the Iberian Peninsula, the papers in these sessions offer exciting glimpses of new discoveries, re-attributions and digital methods, across different materials and across time and space.
Session III is dedicated to fragments in a range of materials, explored through the lens of disciplines like Archaeology, Art History and History of Fashion. The repurposing of fragments of medieval vestments; the study of textile fragments in Italian burials; and the contextualisation of wooden fragments in Iceland are all examples of the interdisciplinary nature of the study of medieval fragments, and of the importance of fragmentary artifacts for our understanding of medieval thought, beliefs and iconography.
Presentations
1221-a – Fragments of Belief: Investigating the Fragmentation and Remaking of Archbishop Morton’s Medieval Vestments
Mary Brooks, Durham University
1221-b – Fragments of Memory: From Obscurity to Significance: the Survival and Reinterpretation of Textile Fragments in Italian Burial Contexts of the 16th Century
Sara Paci Piccolo, State University of New York (SUNY)
1221-c – The Double Life of Some Carved Wooden Fragments in Iceland: the Flatatunga and Bjarnastaðahlíð Planks between Legend and Reality
Elena de Zordi, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia
1223 – New Histories of the Early Book, I: Research Methods and Resources
Ad Putter, University of Bristol and Cathy Hume, University of Bristol
Sponsor
Re-Mediating the Early Book: Pasts & Futures (REBPAF), University of Galway / Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Bristol
Description
What new methods and new perspectives can advance our understanding of the ways manuscripts and incunabula were produced, and what tools do we have at our disposal to learn more about manuscripts and early printed books of the later Middle Ages and early Renaissance?
This session answer these questions in three papers that explore new methodologies and untapped resources for the study of the early book. The three speakers explore digital tools for identifying individual scribal practice; the challenges posed by unfamiliar verse forms in manuscript and early prints; and the evolution of bookseller’s catalogues as valuable bibliographic research tools. The case studies used by the speakers to address these themes deal respectively with the scribal output of the prolific French scribe Guillebert de Mets; the responses to unusual verse forms in Middle Dutch texts from manuscript to early print; and the evolution of the sales catalogues of the booksellers Maggs Bros into valuable research tools.
Presentations
1223-a – Reassessing the Output of the Scribe Guillebert de Mets, c. 1390-c. 1438
Caroline Vandyck, Universiteit Antwerpen
1223-b – What Does the Form Say?: Investigating Variation in Middle Dutch Text Transmission
Sofie Moors, Universiteit Antwerpen; Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen
1223-c – Booksellers’ Catalogues: Sales Tools or Bibliographic Reference Works? – Learning about Early Books
Sara D’Amico, Universidad de Alicante
1241 – Digital Manuscript Studies, II: Methodologies and Materialities
- Kıvılcım Yavuz, University of Leeds and Tamas Kovacs, Universität Graz
Sponsor
Digital Medievalist
Description
The Digital Manuscript Studies sessions bring together scholars interested in applying computational tools to manuscript studies. The second session focuses on different methodologies, taking digital materialities into consideration. The first paper discusses a graph-based approach to visualise relationships within Byzantine Book Epigrams, combining textual and metadata for deeper analysis. De Biase integrates traditional and digital approaches in a quantitative study of Dante’s Commedia. Drawing on her experience of developing an open access book on manuscript studies, Yavuz reflects on the challenges and possibilities of creating open digital resources that are accessible, and relevant to a global audience.
Paper A ‘Enhancing and Visualising Textual and Material Analysis of Manuscripts: A Graph-Based Approach’ is co-authored by Colin Swaelens, Eleonora Lauro, Maxime Deforche, Ilse De Vos, Rachele Ricceri, Floris Bernard, and Kristoffel Demoen.
Presentations
1241-a – Enhancing and Visualising Textual and Material Analysis of Manuscripts: A Graph-Based Approach
Colin Swaelens and Eleonora Lauro, Universiteit Gent
1241-b – The Commedia in Mercantesca: A Quantitative Study on Dante’s Manuscript Tradition between Traditional and Digital Approaches
Federica De Biase, Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Napoli
1241-c – What Does an Open Book on Medieval Manuscripts Look Like?: Designing Inclusive Resources for a Global Community
- Kıvılcım Yavuz, University of Leeds
1306 – Medieval Sermon Studies, II: Learning, Spirituality, and Manuscripts
Alexander Marx, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien and Alexander Marx, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
Sponsor
International Medieval Sermon Studies Society
Description
This session is devoted to current scholarship in sermon studies, an interdisciplinary and innovative field concerned with a pivotal, but often overlooked, source material of the medieval period. The first paper is devoted to John Wenck’s Memoriale divinorum officiorum, an overlooked sermon collection of the mid-fifteenth century; this includes exploring its manuscript evidence and the author’s relation to Nicholas of Cusa. The second paper deals with the Predicatio crucis of Federico Visconti, addressing its pedagogical purposes, in the social context of the city of Pisa, and its aspects of group learning. The third paper examines how, in the wake of the Council of Constance, an enormous amount of manuscript material containing records of purported speech acts at the council circulated in Europe. It explores how the local transmission and copying of manuscripts can help us make sense of who was interested in these speeches, and how this relates to the immediate aftermath of the Great Western Schism.
Presentations
1306-a – Cura pastoralis, Planning, and Group Learning: The Pedagogical Context of the Predicatio crucis of the Homiletic Corpus of Federico Visconti, Archbishop of Pisa, 1253-1277
Giuseppe Paternicò, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
1306-b – The Transmission of Speech at the Council of Constance: Reconsidering the Manuscripts and Their Reception
Aaron Vanides, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
1306-c – A Case for the Old Norwegian Homily Book
Alison Owen (Sawers), University of Cambridge
1319 – Vessels of Knowledge: The Usability of Early Medieval Formulae Collections
Philippe Depreux, Universität Hamburg, Joanna Story, University of Leicester and Levi Roach, University of Exeter
Sponsor
Akademie der Wissenschaften, Hamburg / Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’, Universität Hamburg
Description
This session is devoted to the early medieval formulae edited at Hamburg University within the project “Formulae – Litterae – Chartae”. It deals with the use of formulae as product and medium of knowledge from three interleaving perspectives: how formulae collections were composed to transmit practical legal knowledge, the way these collections were often combined with law texts to form larger corpora of juridical knowledge and what the shape of these codices reveals about their practical use. Although Marculf said that his collection was supposed to guide the first efforts of youths, this session intends to draw a bow between the classroom and the courtroom as both worlds of learning (by doing).
Presentations
1319-a – ‘Everything you need, you’ll find here’: Composition and Use of Formulae Collections
Horst Lößlein, Universität Hamburg
1319-b – ‘What makes Law?’: Formulae, Leges, and Legal Practice
Christoph Walther, Universität Hamburg; Akademie der Wissenschaften in Hamburg
1319-c – Manuscripts Containing Formulae Collections as Providers of Knowledge
Philippe Depreux, Universität Hamburg
1321 – Medieval Fragments, IV: Non-Liturgical and Vernacular Fragments
Manuel Muñoz García, Durham University and Manuel Muñoz García, Durham University
Sponsor
Institute of Medieval & Early Modern Studies (IMEMS), Durham University
Description
Medieval fragments, ever present across a great number of materials, are unique and tantalising windows to the past. Surviving as insertions in later textiles, pedagogical collections or as parts of bindings in manuscripts, fragments offer us layers of meaning: what were they, originally? What was their original purpose? And their later purpose? How and why have they survived? How do we study and analyse them?
In these sessions – Sponsored by the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS) at Durham University – we explore Framentology in a wide sense, from methodology applied to manuscripts to case-studies on textile fragments. From Latin to vernacular, early to late medieval, Iceland to the Iberian Peninsula, the papers in these sessions offer exciting glimpses of new discoveries, re-attributions and digital methods, across different materials and across time and space.
Session IV in the Medieval Fragments series explores a number of non-liturgical avenues, understanding non-liturgical from a textual as well as from a collection or production standpoint: thus, we encounter a Carolingian collection of poetry; vernacular fragments in the archival collection of the Spanish Inquisition; and lastly, fragments from Oxford book bindings. This wide-ranging session brings together known and unknown texts and delves into the practices of book-binders.
Presentations
1321-a – A Carolingian Work of Pioneering Fragmentology?
Mark Saltveit, Independent Scholar
1321-b – Manuscript Fragments in Late Medieval Oxford Bookbinding
Jemima Bennett, University of Oxford; University of Kent
1321-c – Medieval Fragments in Romance Languages in the Inquisitorial Collection of the Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid
- Antoni Iglesias-Fonseca, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Lourdes Soriano Robles, Universitat de Barcelona
1323 – New Histories of the Early Book, II: Technologies and Valuations of the Early Book
Ad Putter, University of Bristol and Ad Putter, University of Bristol
Sponsor
Re-Mediating the Early Book: Pasts & Futures (REBPAF), University of Galway / Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Bristol
Description
This is the second of two sessions which explore how new perspectives and methodologies can advance our understanding of forms of early book production. The speakers in this session examine developments in the production of early books in the period of transition between manuscript and early print, focusing on how book producers negotiated para-texts such as title pages and glosses, and examine the aspects that added value to books then (in the incunable period) and now, in the marketplace and the auctioning house.
Presentations
1323-a – Print or Manuscript?: Drawing Woodcuts and Title Pages in 15th and 16th-Century England
Kaila Yankelevich, University of Bristol
1323-b – Navigating the Glosses: Overcoming Challenges in Supra-Linear Printing
Janne van der Loop, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
1323-c – Calculating Desirability: Modelling Book and Manuscript Auctions
Marika Fox, Universiteit Antwerpen
1341 – Digital Manuscript Studies, III: Possibilities and Challenges
- Kıvılcım Yavuz, University of Leeds and Chris Nighman, University of Toronto; Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario
Sponsor
Digital Medievalist
Description
The Digital Manuscript Studies sessions bring together scholars interested in applying computational tools to manuscript studies. The third session focuses on digital approaches to textuality. Fatma Aladağ explores the possibilities and challenges associated with producing training data for HTR of Ottoman scripts with Transkribus. Dmitri Sichinava addresses challenges in processing Old East Slavic vernacular texts in linguistic corpora. Finally, Saranya Chandran explores Garshuni Malayalam manuscripts, revealing how digital tools can illuminate their historical context and cultural heritage.
Presentations
1341-a – Digital Editions of Ottoman Manuscripts: AI-Driven Transcription of Nesih Script with Transkribus
Elif Can, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakıf Üniversitesi, Türkiye and Fatma Aladağ, Universität Leipzig
1341-b – The Materiality of Old East Slavic Vernacular Writing as a Challenge for Digital Processing in Linguistic Corpora
Dmitri Sitchinava, Universität Potsdam
1341-c – Bridging Manuscripts and Digital Tools: Exploring Garshuni Malayalam Manuscripts through Digital Means
Saranya Chandran, Central European University, Budapest/Wien
Description
Directed by Paola Ricciardi, Noam Lefler, and Suzanne Paul
Medieval manuscripts are complex objects, whose material analysis can shed light on their creation and use. Innovative technologies can reveal hidden elements and help unfold the complex history of the book. This session will take place in the Sheppard Room of the Treasures Gallery, using books from Leeds University Special Collections for a hands-on demonstration of microscopy, multispectral imaging, and spectroscopy in exploring the materiality of manuscripts.
Come and learn how new technologies can transform the way we study medieval books and objects. In this session, our team of scientists, imaging specialists, and historians will explore medieval manuscripts from Leeds University Library, using a range of microscopes, light sources, cameras, and scanners. You’ll also learn more about the work and discoveries of the major AHRC-funded Hidden in Plain Sight research project, which furthers the use of advanced scientific technologies within historical studies. We have been employing new technologies to assist in studying the alteration and transformation of books and textual objects, evident, for example, in mutilation, folding, or overpainting. The project team will join the IMC to present the project’s scope and initial findings, and to introduce key scientific methods, their potential, and limitations. You are also welcome to our reception on the Tuesday, where the team will be happy to answer questions or ideas related to your own research over drinks and nibbles.
Workshop leaders include Paola Ricciardi (Queen Mary University of London / Natural History Museum), Noam Lefler, Historian (Queen Mary University of London), and Suzanne Paul, Keeper of Rare Books and Early Manuscripts (Cambridge University Library).
Matthew Hammond, University of Hull and Matthew Hammond, University of Hull
Sponsor
Social Network Analysis Researchers of the Middle Ages (SNARMA)
Description
Social Network Analysis Researchers of the Middle Ages (SNARMA) have been Sponsoring sessions at IMC Leeds since 2019, bringing together leading scholars with emerging new talents to share knowledge and experience around network approaches to medieval studies. SNARMA sessions have covered a range of network-related themes, from digital prosopography to monastic studies to dealing with SNA software and concepts. This session will see SNA researchers applying their craft to the study of specific groups in the context of social relationships in medieval households, whether the ‘good’ (physicians), the ‘bad’ (felons) or the ‘ugly’ (bureaucrats).
Presentations
1508-a – A Study of the Relationship between Master and Apprentice of Medieval Islamic Physicians with Social Network Analysis
Serra Ağırman Yılmaz, İstanbul Medipol Üniversitesi
1508-b – The Goods, the Bad, and the In-Degree: Networks in Felons’ Household Inventories
Joe Chick, University of Leicester
1508-c – ‘Ita est Gavinus Hamiltoun notarius publicus’: The Campbells of Argyll and Their Notaries Public in the 16th Century
Katharina Pruente, University of Stirling
1519 – Judging Books in the Absence of Covers: Lost Libraries of Late Medieval Portugal
Armando Norte, Universidade de Lisboa and Armando Norte, Universidade de Lisboa
Sponsor
Centro de História, Universidade de Lisboa
Description
This session explores the significance of certain libraries and bibliographic collections established in late medieval Portugal, whose contents have since been dispersed or lost. The survival of records from these collections, even if scattered or partial, still provides critical insights into the cultural and academic dynamics of the period. In this context, the first paper examines the historical impact of texts associated with the royal house of the Avis Dynasty, contributing to their historical understanding. The second paper explores the intersection between royal and academic spheres, investigating how these interactions influenced the preservation and dissemination of knowledge. The final presentation offers an in-depth analysis of a library associated with a notable military figure, reflecting broader trends in military education and intellectual culture. Together, these presentations provide a comprehensive view of the intellectual landscape in late medieval Portugal and the role of these now-lost libraries in shaping historical and cultural perspectives.
Presentations
1519-a – For the Benefit of the Inventory: The Lost Books of the Portuguese Avis Dynasty
Armando Norte, Universidade de Lisboa
1519-b – Court and Classroom: The Interplay of Royal and Academic Cultures in Late Medieval Portugal
Rui Rocha, Universidade de Lisboa
1519-c – The Art of War: Military Knowledge in the Library of Peter, Constable of Portugal, c. 1500
Beatriz Caldeira, Universidade de Lisboa
1524 – Charters as Repositories of Knowledge, I: Understanding Form
Amos Bronner, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, Jonathan Dell Isola, Independent Scholar and Levi Roach, University of Exeter
Description
This strand aims to uncover the ‘world of learning’ of medieval charters. Applying new methodological approaches to royal and private charters from throughout the Middle Ages, papers in this series of sessions investigate the learning that went into the production, copying, and uses of charters, as well as the knowledge which historians can extract from them. Focusing on their form, both material and textual, the first session will explore the knowledge it took to produce, forge, and reproduce charters, as well as the people who made them, used them, and read them. The second session will investigate charters as repositories of memory and identity, exploring how charters expressed gender, royal ideology, and a relationship with the landscape. The final session deals with the possibilities and obstacles which charters present to social historians, asking what we can learn from them about social and legal practices such as servitude and dispute resolution in the Middle Ages.
Presentations
1524-a – A Forger’s Knowledge of the Original: Forging a Papal Privilege in St Gall at the Beginning of the 10th Century
Matthias Rozein, Université de Liège
1524-b – Royal and Seignorial Ideology and the Social Landscape: Foundational Charters as Instruments of Political Interaction in 13th- and Early 14th-Century Northern Iberia
Izei Permach, Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Vitoria-Gasteiz
Amanda Langley, Queen Mary University of London, Rowan Wilson, University of Oxford and John Arblaster, Universiteit Antwerpen
Description
This is the first of three sessions focused on the affective expression in medieval mystical and devotional texts.
In the first paper, from Safwan Amir, uses origin narratives, hagiographic literature, and medieval ethical handbooks to explore the domains of affect and ethics among the early Muslims of South Asia. This study shifts the gaze from an anthropology of Islam that tends to take ethical cultivation of the self as timeless to thinking of multiple ways in which a premodern Muslim self might have existed and engaged with their surrounding environment. The paper builds on the category of the Qussas in circulating virtues, shaping hearts, and instructing affect in their role as storyteller-preachers. In the context of South Asia, we find that they engaged in telling stories to others as well as performing bodily surgeries on those who were opening up to the new tradition. In these complex new settings, affect plays a role in transforming ontologies to pave the way for novel experiences and epistemologies. The paper will show how physical pain and love go hand in hand in Islam’s entry into South Asia.
In the second paper, Bess Brooks asks how expressions of eucharistic desire in female Brabant vitae highlight, and possibly circumvent, (ecclesiastical) control of women’s bodies concerning the sacrament. Focusing on desire for God as expressed in desire for the Eucharist, her paper is composed of three parts: firstly, exploring Sarah Coakley’s understanding of desire as more central to the human person than gender; secondly, examining expressions of longing for God, particularly desire for the Eucharist, in selections from the female Brabant vitae, and, thirdly, analysing the mutuality of desire – a woman for Christ, and Christ for her – in depictions of Lutgard of Tongeren drinking from the side wound of Jesus. Brooks problematises the restrictions on female bodies at the Eucharist using the work of gender theorists such as Judith Butler and theologians such as Tina Beattie, describing the layers of (ecclesiastical) control of women’s bodies at the Eucharist at the time of these hagiographies. Drawing on psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott’s work on mothering and on cultural experience, Brooks suggests that Lutgard’s experience of drinking at the side wound of Christ, and the mutual longing exhibited there, circumvents gendered restrictions on the female body and on expressions of Godly desire in her vita.
In the third paper of this session, Caroline Knapp, will speak about the fine line that ascetics had to walk: cultivating appropriate penitence and sorrow for sins, but excessive focus on sin could easily tip into spiritual perfectionism, acedia, and despair. This ancient spiritual conundrum posed special challenges for medieval readers of emotionally charged devotional literature. In this paper, Knapp examines the fifteenth-century miscellany MS Bodl. 43 to discern how the compiler-editor balanced penitence for sins and consolation in the face of temptations. She argues that the selective excerption of Elizabeth of Schönau’s sermon on chastity, included as sort of prologue to Flete’s Remedies against Temptation, served as a corrective to manuscript’s penitential meditations. The combination of texts coaches the readers to cultivate multiple affective modes—spiritually fruitful guilt, joy in suffering, and patience in temptation—so as to avoid the deadly threat of despair.
Presentations
1525-a – Restricted Desire and Mutual Embrace in the Lives of the Brabant Mystics
Bess Brooks, KU Leuven
1525-b – ‘Gaudium sit ei, non tamen sine tristicia’: Counterbalancing Guilt in a Medieval Penitential Miscellany
Caroline Knapp, Calvin University, Michigan
1525-c – Habits of Feeling: Experiencing Invisible Disabilities and Mysticism in the Devotio Moderna Sister-Books
Godelinde Gertrude Perk, Tampere University
1538 – Digital Approaches to Materiality of Manuscripts, I: Classrooms
Katarzyna Anna Kapitan, École Nationale des Chartes, Paris and Katarzyna Anna Kapitan, École Nationale des Chartes, Paris
Sponsor
Digital Medievalist
Description
The Digital Approaches to Materiality of Manuscripts sessions bring together scholars interested in applying computational tools to manuscript studies. The first session highlights innovative pedagogical approaches in manuscript studies through digital tools. Albers-Morris and Gatti discuss photogrammetry to model manuscript bindings, enhancing understanding of material culture. Odstrčilík and Pürstinger share insights from their Winter School on Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR), focusing on diverse scripts and the impact of collaborative learning. Peratello reviews digital resources for studying medieval Scandinavian manuscripts, addressing challenges of accessibility.
Presentations
1538-a – Modelling Manuscript Bindings for Teaching and 3D Consultation
Catherine Albers-Morris, University of Rochester, New York and Evan Gatti, Elon University, North Carolina
1538-b – Teaching and Learning Handwritten Text Recognition of Medieval Manuscripts: Experience from Winter Schools in Vienna
Jan Odstrčilík and Leon Pürstinger, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
1538-c – Teaching Medieval Scandinavian Manuscripts with Digital Material: Challenges and Future Outlook
Paola Peratello, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia
1548 – Theoretical Approaches to Medieval Religion: Perspectives from Current Research
Rob Lutton, University of Nottingham, Lucy Sackville, University of York and Simon Yarrow, University of Birmingham
Sponsor
Department of History / Institute for Medieval Research, University of Nottingham
Description
The session showcases current research on medieval religion that either applies or develops new theoretical approaches to better understand what it meant to be religious in the Middle Ages. The first paper arises out of the writing of a monograph on the cult of the Holy Name of Jesus in late medieval England. It applies theories of ritual action, and of cognition and communication, to move beyond historical and scholarly exegesis of devotion to the Holy Name in order to try to explore the many meanings of this devotion for its adherents. The second paper is drawn from a PhD thesis examining saint-making at the local level in the later Middle Ages. It approaches the literature of canonisation through the lens of value theory, and argues that the process of saint-making was a febrile arena for the production, realisation, and manipulation of value(s) of different kinds. In doing so, it offers a vision of medieval religion distinct from that of institution-focused studies, and suggests that ‘religion’ as a sphere of cultural activity can be productively understood as the co-ordination of individual value projects.
Presentations
1548-a – Religious Action and Exegesis: Thinking Theoretically about the Cult of the Holy Name of Jesus in Late Medieval England
Rob Lutton, University of Nottingham
1548-b – Religion as Process: Saint-Making and Value in Late Medieval France
Edmund van der Molen, University of Nottingham
1608 – Network Analysis for Medievalists, II: New Approaches to Central Medieval Sources
Matthew Hammond, University of Hull and David Zbíral, Masarykova univerzita, Brno
Sponsor
Social Network Analysis Researchers of the Middle Ages (SNARMA)
Description
Social Network Analysis Researchers of the Middle Ages (SNARMA) have been Sponsoring sessions at IMC Leeds since 2019, bringing together leading scholars with emerging new talents to share knowledge and experience around network approaches to medieval studies. SNARMA sessions have covered a range of network-related themes, from digital prosopography to monastic studies to dealing with SNA software and concepts. This session will see SNA researchers applying new network-based approaches to key sources and issues related to Europe in the Central Middle Ages. Prof Robert Gramsch-Stehfest (Jena), a leading scholar in medieval network research, will shed light on the complex interpersonal dynamics of the council of San Gimignano, Clemens Beck, an important voice in the Digital Humanities, will explore the use of Large Language Models in the sources of the central Middle Ages, and Dr Matthew Hammond (KCL, Hull), will expound on the potential of SNA to unpack the processes of cultural diffusion, affecting the peripheries of Europe in this era, known as Europeanization.
Presentations
1608-a – Network Analysis of High Medieval Sources Supported by Large Language Models (LLMs)
Clemens Beck, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
1608-b – Exploring Network Approaches for Comparative Analysis of Medieval Europeanisation
Matthew Hammond, University of Hull
1616 – Visualising History in Medieval Manuscripts, I
Charlie Rozier, University of East Anglia, Jacqueline M. Burek, George Mason University, Virginia and Laura Cleaver, School of Advanced Study, University of London
Sponsor
Haskins Society
Description
This sequence of two sessions investigates how the physical appearance of the manuscript page, shaped audiences’ understandings of history. While the field of manuscript studies has attracted much scholarly interest over the past few decades, there has been comparatively little attention paid to how visual elements such as mise-en-page, images, and diagrams, influenced the ways in which authors, scribes and readers, experienced the written past across the interrelated genres of narrative history, chronicle, annals, tables, diagrams, etc.
This session explores how the visual characteristics of a historiographical text affected audiences’ awareness, experience, and perceptions of the past. Utilising approaches including modern textual criticism and medieval theories of reading and cognition, the papers featured within this session shed new light on medieval epistemologies of history. Together, they demonstrate that, in the Middle Ages, teaching and learning about history was simultaneously a visual and textual enterprise.
Presentations
1616-a – ‘Opus hoc contexui’: Strategies of Writing and Re-Writing in Two ‘Original’ Manuscripts of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum
Rachel Wilson, Yale University
1616-b – Pillars of the Church: Architectural Framing of Episcopal Lists in 12th-Century England and Normandy, Its Possible Contexts and Functions
Stanislav Mereminskiy, Independent Scholar
1616-c – Cartographies of Time: Mapping History in the Manuscripts of John of Worcester
Charlie Rozier, University of East Anglia
Charlotte Stanford, Brigham Young University, Utah, Heather McCune Bruhn, Pennsylvania State University and Charlotte Stanford, Brigham Young University, Utah
Description
Technical and artisanal knowledge of the medieval period was often jealously guarded information. From the limitations imposed by craft guild ‘mysteries’ to undocumented transmission of creative methods, understanding the processes of fabrication presents many challenges to modern scholarship. In this session we present three papers that explore manuscripts as sources for reconstructing information otherwise lost to the historical record. In “Bound and Broken: The Arma Christi and the Illuminated Page,” bookmaking techniques and wear patterns of Books of Hours are analyzed to help provide greater understanding of devotional practices in the later medieval period. In “To Fight Like Sir Gawain: Reconstruction of Medieval Knightly Arts on the Basis of Middle English Romances”, fencing techniques taken from Middle English texts are analyzed against the descriptions of Arthurian combat. In “If I Were a Carpenter: How to Learn a Craft in Medieval Portugal,” carpenters’ regulations are examined to provide light on assessing artisan skill and craft procedure.
Presentations
1621-a – Bound and Broken: The Arma Christi and the Illuminated Page
Kara Ann Morrow, College of Wooster, Ohio
1621-b – To Fight like Sir Gawain: Reconstruction of Medieval Knightly Arts on the Basis of Middle English Arthurian Romances
Przemyslaw Grabowski-Górniak, Uniwersytet Warszawski
1621-c – If I Were a Carpenter: How to Learn a Craft in Medieval Portugal
Ana Marques, Universidade do Porto and Luís Miguel Duarte, Universidade do Minho
1624 – Charters as Repositories of Knowledge, II: Charters, Identity, and Memory
Amos Bronner, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, Jonathan Dell Isola, Independent Scholar and Elina Screen, University of Oxford
Description
This strand aims to uncover the ‘world of learning’ of medieval charters. Applying new methodological approaches to royal and private charters from throughout the Middle Ages, papers in this series of sessions investigate the learning that went into the production, copying, and uses of charters, as well as the knowledge which historians can extract from them. Focusing on their form, both material and textual, the first session will explore the knowledge it took to produce, forge, and reproduce charters, as well as the people who made them, used them, and read them. The second session will investigate charters as repositories of memory and identity, exploring how charters expressed gender, royal ideology, and a relationship with the landscape. The final session deals with the possibilities and obstacles which charters present to social historians, asking what we can learn from them about social and legal practices such as servitude and dispute resolution in the Middle Ages.
Presentations
1624-a – Creating a Vision of the Past in Carolingian Charters
Jonathan Dell Isola, Independent Scholar
1624-b – An Estate of One’s Own: Gender and Landholding in 10th-Century Wessex
Nicola McNeil, Durham University
1624-c – Symbolic Communication in the Charters of Early Medieval England: Land, Memory, and Meaning
Jonathan Tickle, Independent Scholar
Rowan Wilson, University of Oxford, Amanda Langley, Queen Mary University of London and Michael Hahn, Sarum College
Description
This is the second of three sessions discussing affective expression in medieval mystical and devotional texts.
In the first paper of this session, Corrine Clark offers a reading of the physiological liquid connections between memory, movement and emotion in the Wooing Group meditations and select analogues. Interested in liquid as a kinetic, dynamic element which manifests in multivalent forms from tears, water and wine to blood and honey, Clark builds on the work of scholars like Hetta Howes, E. K. Myerson and Mary Carruthers to establish the significance of a liquid state or presence in affective constructions of divine interactions or “sweet” emotions.
In the second paper, Hannah Victoria Johnson argues that we should take sensory metaphors and reference to sensory perception in Mechthild von Magdeburg’s (1208-1282) Ein vliessendes lieht der gottheit (‘The Flowing Light of the Godhead’). Mechthild’s devotional text much more literally as indicators for affective interpretation. They will use a cognitive approach to linguistic interpretation, and examine how certain expressions of affective devotion open themselves up to queer interpretations legible as such within a medieval framework of embodied cognition.
In the final paper of this session, Heather Glover responds to a substantial gap in the scholarship on Victorian medievalism: nineteenth-century engagement with late medieval contemplative writing and the neglect of religious medievalism and the role of monastic men and women in these cross-period encounters. – a substantial gap to which my paper responds. Read alongside their wider writings and in relation to their monastic contests, she argues that the Cistercian Henry Collins’ editions of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love and The Cloud of Unknowing and the Dominican Augusta Drane’s work on Catherine of Siena’s extensive writings reveal their desire to emulate these medieval writers through a thinking, feeling, and ultimately contemplative engagement with their texts. Whereas the Catholicism of these medieval contemplatives had led to suspicious among post-Reformation readers, Collins and Drane emphasize the devotional potential of their writings, which they encountered in the tradition of lectio divina.
Presentations
1625-a – Liquid Longing in Early Middle English Meditations
Corinne Clark, University of Oxford
1625-b – The Senses in Mechthild von Magdeburg’s Effective Devotional Text: Sensory Perception, Cognitive Processes, and a Queer Experience of the Divine
Hannah Victoria Johnson, Sorbonne Université, Paris
1625-c – ‘Read, that God may speak’: Medieval Contemplative Writing and Victorian Monastic Communities
Heather Glover, University of Lincoln
1638 – Digital Approaches to Materiality of Manuscripts, II: Structures
Katarzyna Anna Kapitan, École Nationale des Chartes, Paris and Laura Morreale, Independent Scholar
Sponsor
Digital Medievalist
Description
The Digital Approaches to Materiality of Manuscripts sessions bring together scholars interested in applying computational tools to manuscript studies. The second session focuses on structures and examines digital tools and methods advancing the study of manuscript materiality. Campagnolo provides updates on VisColl, a digital tool and infrastructure that models and visualizes the physical structure of books in codex format and its current software implementation VCEditor, which was recently awarded a Digital Humanities Advancement Grant (Level III) from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Kaplan investigates marginal flora of fifteenth-century manuscripts and asks whether we might be able to date these manuscripts more precisely with the help of digital humanities tools. Pourahmadi, Frandsen and Eriksen address the challenges of revealing obscured manuscript fragments repurposed in book bindings and propose a combined approach of hyperspectral imaging and deep learning.
Paper C ‘Challenges and Solutions for Revealing Hidden Text in Binding Materials: Case Studies from the Herlufsholm Collection at the University Library of Southern Denmark’ is co-authored by Baharan Pourahmadi, Mads Toudal Frandsen, and René Lynge Eriksen.
Presentations
1638-a – Advancing Manuscript Materiality Studies through VisColl and VCEditor
Alberto Campagnolo, Université Catholique de Louvain
1638-b – Flowers for a First Date?: On Floral Borders as a Way to Date Manuscripts
- C. Kaplan, Louisiana Tech University
1638-c – Challenges and Solutions for Revealing Hidden Text in Binding Materials: Case Studies from the Herlufsholm Collection at the University Library of Southern Denmark
Baharan Pourahmadi, Syddansk Universitet, Odense
Sören Kaschke, Universität zu Köln, Bart van Hees, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen and Jennifer R. Davis, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC
Sponsor
Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste
Description
Traditionally, early modern scholars have a rather bad press when it comes to their copying of medieval texts, with routine accusations of arbitrary interventions, cuts as well as emendations. This session will present test cases of narrative and normative texts that have only come to light thanks to the efforts of scholars from the 16th-18th centuries. Grigorii Borisov delves into Jacques Sirmond’s edition of capitularies of Charles the Bald (1623), analyzing contents as well as codicological and palaeographical traits of his now lost manuscripts from Beauvais and Laon. Sören Kaschke examines Alexandre Wiltheim’s role in saving the Annales Maximiniani for posterity, while Bart van Hees pursues the early history of the Annales regni Francorum by looking at often neglected prints and copies of erudites.
Presentations
1641-a – Jacques Sirmond’s Knowledge of Palaeography and Early Medieval Latin as a Resource for Reconstructing the Lost Carolingian Law-Books from Beauvais and Laon
Grigorii Borisov, Universität zu Köln
1641-b – Almost Lost in Transmission: Alexandre Wiltheim and the Annales Maximiniani
Sören Kaschke, Universität zu Köln
1641-c – Manuscript Lost: Looking for the Early History of the Annales Regni Francorum
Bart van Hees, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen
1643 – Account Books and Practices of Accounting, I: Modern Approaches to Medieval Accounts
Sebastian Weil, Universität Kassel, Christian Jaser, Universität Kassel and Christian Jaser, Universität Kassel
Description
The world of medieval accounting and accountability has been studied in various historiographical contexts and traditions. Accounts were kept by towns, clerical institutions and royal or noble administrations to keep taps on their financial administration and to demand accountability from those in charge of it. The 14th and 15th centuries saw a marked increase in written accounts – in turn, the sheer amount of surviving material is an impediment on comparative study. The papers of this panel will take a view on methods for editing and analysing these sources, taking DH-approaches into consideration and thereby trying to open up ways to interlink different historiographical traditions. The opportunities for AI-supported transcription and edition will be discussed as well as the use (and the pitfalls) of digital tools, which can help to work through large amounts of serial sources. The wider availability of both edited material and tools to work through them might further our understanding of the knowledge system of accounting and the transmission of these practices.
Presentations
1643-a – Editing Accounts?: Editing Practices by Example of the 15th-Century Account Books of Munich and Vienna
Sebastian Weil, Universität Kassel
1643-b – Dissecting Accounts: R as a Tool for Decoding Pre-Modern Account Books
Matthias Berlandi, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
1643-c – The Count Is Dead; Long Live the Countess!: The Gendered Evolution of Hunting Record Keeping for the County of Artois from 1298-1328
Julia DeSimas, University of California, Santa Barbara
1701 – Learning the Artes: Manuscript Evidence of the Study of the Liberal Arts, 12th-14th Centuries
Laure Miolo, University of Oxford, Clotilde Lemarié, University of Cambridge and Angela Cossu, Université de Namur
Description
The aim of this session is to examine learning and teaching practices, their transmission and reception, in the context of the liberal arts through a detailed analysis of manuscripts. In historiography, while the texts of the trivium and quadrivium have benefited from extensive research, there have been relatively few studies focusing on the manuscripts themselves to provide a systematic analysis. The four papers focus on the trivium and quadrivium in England, France, Italy and Germany between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. They concentrate on palaeography and codicology, reflecting on the production, dissemination and use of manuscripts in the disciplines of logic, rhetoric, astronomy and music. Based on case studies focusing on specific manuscripts and the analysis of corpora of manuscripts, the session will investigate the formation of textbooks, the influence of the milieux on the copy and the format of a manuscript, the paratext, the association of texts and the dissemination of manuscripts as evidence of different practices. The session will address the diverse contexts of manuscript production and reception, and will explore the multifaceted dimensions of learning and teaching practices associated with the trivium and quadrivium.
Presentations
1701-a – Tools for Logic: Manuscripts of Commentaries and 12th-Century Schools
Sofia Orsino, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia
1701-b – Studying the Classical Rhetorical Figurae in the 12th Century: Material Evidence from Manuscripts of Marbod of Rennes’ De ornamentis verborum
Clotilde Lemarié, University of Cambridge
1701-c – ‘Ad utilitatem communem studentium’: Reading and Annotating the Corpus astronomicum – A Case Study of El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo, O.II.10
Laure Miolo, University of Oxford
1709 – From Medieval Sources to Big Data, II
Adam Zapała, Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II; Polska Akademia Nauk, Warszawa, Robert L. J. Shaw, Masarykova univerzita, Brno and Adam Zapała, Polska Akademia Nauk, Warszawa
Sponsor
Centrum Studiów Mediewistycznych, Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II / Centrum pro digitální výzkum náboženství, Masarykova univerzita, Brno
Description
Knowledge and its representation are social phenomena. Their medieval modalities thus deserve to be treated not only in case-studies, but also at scale. Computational techniques open the door to surveys of unprecedented breadth: their achievement requires the gathering of huge amounts of data from multiple sources in a way that is consistent, comparable, expandable and reusable. This task might be assisted by automation, but also requires deep thought around data models in order to sufficiently capture the complexities of the material. This panel brings together researchers whose work embraces the nuances of medieval sources yet also encompasses their multitude to present their approaches towards scalable analysis.
Presentations
1709-a – Automating the Inquisition: AI-Assisted Data Capture of Dissident Interactions Described in Heresy Trial Records
Robert L. J. Shaw, Masarykova univerzita, Brno
1709-b – Publishing Open Datasets for Medieval Studies and Modelling Aggressively for Reuse
Laura Morreale, Independent Scholar
1709-c – The Future Is Now: Data Sustainability – A Crisis or Opportunity?
Harriet M. Sonne de Torrens, University of Toronto
1716 – Visualising History in Medieval Manuscripts, II
Charlie Rozier, University of East Anglia, Jacqueline M. Burek, George Mason University, Virginia and Emily A. Winkler, University of Oxford
Sponsor
Haskins Society
Description
This sequence of two sessions investigates how the physical appearance of the manuscript page shaped medieval authors’ understandings of history. While the field of manuscript studies has attracted much scholarly interest over the last few decades, there has been comparatively little attention paid to how visual elements such as mise-en-page, images, and diagrams influenced the ways in which authors, scribes and readers experiences the written past, across the interrelated genres of narrative history, chronicle, annals, tables, diagrams, etc.
These papers explore how the visual characteristics of a historiographical text affected audiences’ awareness, experience, and perception of the past. Utilising a variety of approaches, including from modern textual criticism to medieval theories of reading and cognition, these sessions shed new light on medieval epistemologies of history. Together, they demonstrate that in the Middle Ages, teaching and learning about history was simultaneously a visual and textual enterprise.
Presentations
1716-a – The Vertigo of Lists: Listing as a Medium to Visualise (and Teach) History in the 12th Century
Gabriele Passabì, Società Italiana per la Storia Medievale (SISMED)
1716-b – Visualising England’s History during the Hundred Years War: Royal Genealogical Rolls in England and France
Jaclyn Rajsic, Queen Mary University of London
1716-c – Remodelling British History in 15th-Century France
Hannah Weaver, Columbia University
Charlotte Stanford, Brigham Young University, Utah, Kara Ann Morrow, College of Wooster, Ohio and Charlotte Stanford, Brigham Young University, Utah
Description
In this session we present three papers that explore material culture artefacts that help illuminate processes of metalworking and gem engraving. In “Beyond Theophilus: Master Goldsmiths and their Practices,” the texts of Theophilus and Alexander Neckham are reviewed and combined with additional written resources such as contracts, payment records, guild regulations and wills as well as an examination of selected artefacts to explore the practices of late medieval goldsmiths. In “Where Have All the Chalices Gone? Interpreting Technical Ceramics in Irish Ecclesiastic Settings,” archaeological evidence combined with the remains of technical ceramics such as crucibles, furnaces and molds will illuminate aspects of production practices despite the paucity of surviving Irish liturgical metalwork. In “Reviving an Ancient Artistic Tradition: Gem Engraving in 12th-14th Century Britain,” examination of physical gems set within seal matrices, as well as their engravings, is combined with contemporary literature about the technique of gem engraving to demonstrate their renewed popularity and use, specifically in connection to the long twelfth century Renaissance.
Presentations
1721-a – Beyond Theophilus: Master Goldsmiths and Their Practices
Heather McCune Bruhn, Pennsylvania State University
1721-b – Where Have All the Chalices Gone?: Interpreting Technical Ceramics in Irish Ecclesiastic Settings
Emmaleigh Calhoun, Saint Louis University, Missouri
1721-c – Reviving an Ancient Artistic Tradition: Gem Engraving in 12th-14th-Century Britain
Adél Ternovácz, University of Reading
1724 – Charters as Repositories of Knowledge, III: Charters as Sources for Social History
Amos Bronner, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, Jonathan Dell Isola, Independent Scholar and Jennifer R. Davis, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC
Description
This strand aims to uncover the ‘world of learning’ of medieval charters. Applying new methodological approaches to royal and private charters from throughout the Middle Ages, papers in this series of sessions investigate the learning that went into the production, copying, and uses of charters, as well as the knowledge which historians can extract from them. Focusing on their form, both material and textual, the first session will explore the knowledge it took to produce, forge, and reproduce charters, as well as the people who made them, used them, and read them. The second session will investigate charters as repositories of memory and identity, exploring how charters expressed gender, royal ideology, and a relationship with the landscape. The final session deals with the possibilities and obstacles which charters present to social historians, asking what we can learn from them about social and legal practices such as servitude and dispute resolution in the Middle Ages.
Presentations
1724-a – Consensus in the Carolingian Dispute Charters
Amos Bronner, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC
1724-b – Assembly Attendance in Northern Iberia, c. 900-1100
Daria Safronova, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
1724-c – Crystallising Servitude: Social Practice and Documentary Culture in Flanders, c. 950-1100
Niall O’Súilleabháin, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Poitiers / Université de Poitiers
1738 – Digital Approaches to Materiality of Manuscripts, III: Patterns
Katarzyna Anna Kapitan, Ecole Nationale des Chartes, Paris and N. Kıvılcım Yavuz, University of Leeds
Sponsor
Digital Medievalist
Description
The Digital Approaches to Materiality of Manuscripts sessions bring together scholars interested in applying computational tools to manuscript studies. The third session focuses on patterns and explores advancements in AI and machine learning applied to manuscripts. Dows-Miller analyses medieval scribes’ word-breaking practices in Jean Froissart’s Chroniques. Combining traditional palaeography with AI technology, Bouressa introduces an AI-driven tool for the identification of Beneventan, St. Gall, Hispanic, and square neumes in medieval music manuscripts. Lee and Lee propose using generative AI in fragmentology, offering new approaches to reconstruct lost elements of manuscripts while ensuring ethical transparency.
Paper B ‘Automatic Neume Script Identification’ is co-authored by Kyrie Bouressa and Ichiro Fujinaga
Presentations
1738-a – Learning the Lines: Machine Learning and Statistical Approaches to Words Broken across Lines in the Manuscripts of Jean Froissart’s Chroniques
Sebastian Dows-Miller, University of Oxford
1738-b – Automatic Neume Script Identification
Kyrie Bouressa, McGill University; Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media & Technology (CIRMMT), Québec
1738-c – Reimagining What’s Lost: Exploring Applications of Generative AI to Fragmentology
Loren Easterday Lee, University of Virginia and Lindsay Evans Lee, Independent Scholar
1741 – The Medieval Manuscript: Reimagining Access and Scholarship in the Digital Realm
Annelynn Koenders, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag and Kathryn Rudy, University of St Andrews
Description
The transformative journey of digitizing medieval manuscripts presents both complexities and possibilities that arise at various stages of the digitization process. This session broadens our understanding of the impact of digitization on manuscript studies, highlighting the need for innovative approaches in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. Each paper delves into critical aspects, such as the practical challenges of mobile digitization, the material relationship between scholars and digital facsimiles, and the global accessibility of manuscripts enabled by IIIF. Together, these insights demonstrate how digital manuscripts reshape research, interpretation, and collaboration, offering new ways to engage with and preserve cultural heritage for future scholarship.
Presentations
1741-a – Digitising Manuscripts on the Move: On-Site Digitisation for eCodicesNL
Annelynn Koenders and Janou Munnik, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag
1741-b – Between the Digital Medievalist and Digital Vellum: A Materialist Approach for Looking at Current Manuscript Scholarship
Suzette van Haaren, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
1741-c – From Leeds to Tokyo: Unlocking Global Manuscript Collections with the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF)
Evelien Hauwaerts, Openbare Bibliotheek Brugge
New Possibilities in Exploring Digitised Medieval Manuscripts Using IIIF: A Hands-On Workshop
Directed by: Digirati
The Image Interoperability Framework, or IIIF, is revolutionising how digitised material is hosted and shared online by providing a set of open standards. Hundreds of cultural heritage organisations have made their collections available as IIIF content via their own systems and repositories.
Originally inspired by common use cases from digital research in medieval manuscripts, there are now billions of IIIF digital objects on the web, representing a wide variety of cultural heritage content from manuscripts, books, maps, and artwork to videotape, audio recordings, and more. Furthermore, there is a rich ecosystem of tools and platforms now available for working on IIIF content for crowdsourcing, online exhibitions, scholarly research, and education.
The IIIF format is central to the Digital Library Infrastructure Project (DLIP) which aims to make the University of Leeds’ rich cultural collections more widely accessible, reusable, and interoperable. This session will first provide a brief overview of IIIF as well as an update on DLIP and what it means for improved access to Leeds’ cultural collections.
We will then move on to guided hands-on exercises where you will gain experience of applying IIIF concepts through easy-to-use tools. You will publish your own IIIF digital objects by reconstructing material currently held in different digital repositories, manipulate images to enhance them and bring out new information, examine digital resources in close detail, annotate them, and learn about the many ways you can go on to showcase your work.
The session will be delivered by Digirati, consultants for software solutions for cultural heritage institutions, with support from University of Leeds Library. No technical expertise is required, but please bring a laptop and, if you wish, your own images.
Medieval Records and the National Archives: A Virtual Workshop
Directed by Sean Cunningham & Kathryn Maude
For all medievalists the ability to locate, read, and understand archival sources is fundamental to their research, whatever their discipline and stage in their career. The National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA) holds one of the world’s largest and most important collections of medieval records. The vast archive of the English royal government informs almost every aspect of medieval life, from the royal court to the peasantry, land ownership and tenure, the law, warfare and diplomacy, trade and manufacture, transport, credit and debt, death and memory, material culture, literature, art, and music. However, finding, using, and interpreting the rich diversity of material is not always entirely straightforward, and its potential for a wide range of research uses is often unclear. This workshop will offer an introduction to TNA, and show you how to begin your research into its collections and access research support. Images of original documents will be used to illustrate the range of disciplines and topics TNA records can inform and illuminate, including locating hidden medieval voices among the masses of paper and parchment. Short, themed sessions will also introduce attendees to the ‘Mechanics of Medieval Government’ and ‘Accessing Medieval Justice’.
This workshop is aimed at all medievalists, from masters students through to experienced academics in any discipline, who wish to discover more about the rich archive collections at TNA and how they might use them in their research. There are no pre-requisites for attending the workshop, although a basic knowledge of Latin is recommended.
Running the online workshop will be Sean Cunningham, Head of Collections (Medieval, Early Modern, Legal and Map Records) at TNA, who specialises in 15th- and 16th-century records of English royal government, and Kathryn Maude, Team Leader: Medieval Specialists, who focusses on histories of gender and sexuality.
This workshop is Sponsored by The National Archives, Kew.
Performative Calligraphy Workshop
‘Three fingers write, the whole body labours’: A Performative Calligraphy Workshop
Directed by Elizabeth Moodey, Kathryn Rudy, and Irene van Renswoude
Medievalists often study pictures of scribes at work but have little conception of the physical labour involved in scribal practice. This workshop will give an introduction to the posture and discipline of the scribe.
Each participant will receive two golf pencils, a pen, and paper. We will offer a short, illustrated introduction to medieval scribal practice and some informed speculation about training.
Participants will then be invited to adopt a posture that reflects medieval scribal practices, according to images of scribes at work, as well as archaeological evidence from scribes’ burials. Elizabeth, an accomplished calligrapher, will guide them through the production of familiar and unfamiliar scripts, starting with simple strokes and moving toward letterforms. Rather than focusing on creative expression, participants will experience the physical discipline and corporate nature of medieval writing. Participants will learn about ‘corporate scripts’, i.e., those written by multiple people in a style so similar that their resulting forms are indistinguishable. (In short: it’s not about you and your personal style!) Participants will understand how writing not only formed letters but also shaped the body and social dynamics of scribes.
Images of medieval scribes at work will enhance the session by providing context for the physical discipline required by script and material (pen and parchment). This is not a traditional calligraphy class, but an exploration of script as a performance where participants form part of a collective scribal body.
All necessary materials will be provided.
DMSI – Digital Medieval Studies Institute
Organised by Laura K. Morreale and N. Kivilcim Yavuz
In partnership with the University of Leeds Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds Libraries, and Digital Medievalist, the Digital Medieval Studies Institute (DMSI) presents a full-day programme featuring workshops on digital scholarly methods specifically tailored for medievalists.
The day-long DMSI will introduce participants to a range of digital methodologies currently in use within the field of medieval studies and offer in-depth exploration through one of five workshop offerings. In addition to the workshops, there will be a group meeting at the start, sessions of lightning talks at midday, and an end-of-the-day wrap up session that will provide opportunities for networking with other scholars with shared interests. The primary goal of DMSI is for attendees to gain sufficient training during the one-day event to apply the skills acquired to their ongoing research and teaching in medieval studies. A drinks reception will bring the day to a close.
This event can only accommodate a limited number of participants and requires a separate application. Applications are open to everyone, but preference will be given to applicants who demonstrate how they plan to apply what they learn in their research, teaching, or professional practice. Workshops will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, and applicants will be admitted on a rolling basis. Participants may enrol in only one workshop.
Each participant may choose one of the following workshops:
Geospatial Tools for Mapping the Middle Ages – Carrie Beneš, New College of Florida
Cooperative Network Visualisation with NetCreate – Nathaniel Howard, Indiana University Bloomington
Foundations in Working with Medieval Manuscripts using IIIF – Paul Mollahan and Tom Crane, Digirati
Seeing Beyond: Practical and Low-Cost Multispectral Imaging – Helen Davies, University of Colorado Colorado Springs
Artificial Intelligence: Image Analysis Applied to Medieval Manuscripts – Dominique Stutzman, Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (IRHT), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris
The participation fee for the full day’s programme will be £140.00. Up to ten bursaries will be available to support attendance to DMSI. Five of these bursaries are reserved for current students and alumni of the University of Leeds Institute for Medieval Studies.
Further details of each workshop can be found at the link below.
All those interested in participating must submit an application directly to the DMSI organisers at https://tinyurl.com/DMSI-2025-UK.